mdlbear | Trainwreck postponed?

When I went to pay my bills this afternoon (after a walk and a couple of good, long conversations, one with a coworker and one with cflute), I sat down to pay some bills and, out of curiosity, went to the detail page for the equity line of credit. And saw a rate that was more than a point and a half higher than what was printed on the bill I got in the mail last week.

At this point, I completely lost interest (as it were) in work, and was starting to contemplate the fact that, if I did have a heart attack, the insurance would at least cover the mortgage. Time to head for the bank to see what could be salvaged from the wreckage -- the line-of-credit has an option for converting to a fixed rate.

As it turns out, I'd missed something important: the LOC rate and the fixed rate are pegged to different indices. The fixed rate is tied to a fairly slow-moving average on T-bill rates, and was a lot closer to what I'd been paying on the variable rate loan up until now. Came out of it with a 20-year fixed-rate mortgage at less than the payments I'd been in the habit of paying for the LOC. So that's a win.

But it was close. Another couple of weeks into the meltdown, and...

Got home at about 4:30 and had a good-sized glass of gin. I hope not to have that scary a Halloween again for a loooooong time.