My husband and I have a couple of financial/home goals that we would like to tackle in the same timeframe, and I am trying to understand how to go about it. So I am looking for advice on the order of things, and just generally the best approach. Below are the 3 goals and the different factors involved in each. Is there one of these that I should do first, like the mortgage? Or given my explanations below, should I do one of the other goals first?
We have a high income and stable employment. The main reason for our scores not being higher is that we took out a HELOC at the time of home purchase in 2017 to avoid a jumbo loan (we used a conventional mortgage + HELOC to cover the original purchase price) - as a result, the current HELOC is still at a fairly high balance, is being counted as revolving credit, and is making it look like our revolving utilizaton is high, despite having no credit card debt. So one thing to consider is that getting a second/larger HELOC, is likely to increase our credit score by brining down our utilizaton (unless we spend that money, of course).
GOAL 1: Refinance mortgage - Our mortgage is from 2017, so pretty recent, but rates are so much better now that we could save quite a bit on interest by refinancing. It looks like we could probably lower by a full 1%, so our payment would be lower and we would save a lot of interest over the years. We plan to stay in our home for the next 15-20 years until our young children are grown. What is the easiest way to find the best rate with our credit profile (scores between 680-700)? I've heard of using the features on Credit Karma or even Zillow to pull from lots of lenders - any best options?
GOAL 2: My husband has multiple private student loan accounts with a couple of different lenders. Some of the rates are fairly high. We would like to refinance/consolidate all of these together, to get a better rate and make it easier with one payment, so that we can really start tacking this debt and knock it out in the next 5 years.
GOAL 3: We would like to take out a HELOC for a home renovation project. We would like to get financing taken care of soon, but don't need to actually start the project immediately. As stated above, I think it's likely that this HELOC will actually increase our credit score (currently 680-700) because it will substantially reduce our utilization %.
I know this is long, but I truly appreciate any advice/help!
Mid-2010 Starting Scores: FAKO EQ 476 FAKO EX 506 FICO TU98 575
July 2017 Current Scores: Approx 710 (waiting for official updates)
