Other than deductibles and such, the main thing that’s helpful to know is whether your policy will cover actual cash value (i.e. depreciated value) of house and belongings, or if it covers full replacement cost. Also, if possible, see what people are saying about the actual claims process.
We could get slightly cheaper insurance but our company gives full replacement cost and when we had a major claim (broken in door, thousands of dollars in electronics stolen) they were so amazing to deal with I’m basically a customer for life at this point. They never quibbled with values on the items stolen, our computers we replaced ourselves ASAP and they reimbursed, and everything else they tracked down equivalent items at a local Best Buy, ordered them, and had them ready for pickup. We ended up with newer, better versions of everything we lost.
I’d recommend them to everyone but they only operate in my state.
Does anyone remember a song from a band in the early 2000s (def before 2010) that was disco style and was called Dynamite – Alive at Last. Possibly stylized as Dynamite! It got a lot of play on indie pandora stations. I honestly can’t remember which part of that is the song title vs the band name. I used to be able to find it by searching that on youtube. It’s disappeared. Nothing on spotify. I can remember the opening notes perfectly but none of the lyrics. Possibly starts with “here I go” but I could be making that up. I know this is so weird but I just remembered how good that song was and it’s going to haunt me.
edit: If you heard Ronald Gregory Erickson on your pandora back in the day you definitely have heard this please help meeeee
edit: I found it! the band is “Dynasty” not Dynamite >>> kickass song linked in my journal. Thank you and goodnight!
How do HELOCs work in Canada? there are many remarkably bad websites out there, and the random mortgage broker I contacted said “call your bank if you don’t want a real mortgage”, and the bank obviously doesn’t want to do phone calls when I do (between 7am and 830am on random mornings).
Yes, I work at a bank, yes I asked for one of those mortgage people to contact me, the site promised 24h turnaround, and they didn’t.
HELOCs are done through the mortgage issuing bank, yes. You can get some % of the value of your home in available credit, I think it’s half the equity above 25% of the home or something like that.
As in, if your home is worth 100k until you’ve paid off 25k of it there is no equity available. When you’ve paid off 50k you would have 12.5k available. I think I’m getting the exact % wrong, but you get the idea.
Interest should be prime plus some percent, floating. Mine is currently 7%.
Depending on the loan contract you can pay only the interest each month, or a minimum $ amount. I pay the interest or $300, whatever is more.
It shows up on my banking website like another account, and I can move money in and out of it as easily as I transfer money between my chequing and savings.
Is there anything else I can tell you about it?
Our Mortgage and HELOC are through RBC, and yes are based on a percentage of the equity available. We bought our house for $400,000, when we got the HELOC it was worth around $800,000 plus we’d made six years of payments, so there was a lot of equity available.
We are required to pay interest only and they required that it be a direct debit out of our RBC account. We also pay principal every week because we don’t want to be in debt forever. The interest is auto-paid on the 20th of every month.
Our interest is prime +/- floating, and is currently 2.95%.
The original application was through the banker at the bank. We went in a few years later to extend it for a rental property (early in covid last year) and I know there was a cost for the paper work for the increase. I don’t recall if we had to pay for the original application. When we did the increase I booked an appointment with a branch through RBC online, the guy called us at our appointment time for a phone appointment, and we went and signed the papers in the parking lot.
is there any cost to maintain it if we use it, pay that off, and then don’t owe anything? Will they shut it down like a credit card that hasn’t been used for 12 months?
I had my HELOC existing but unused for more than five years and nobody cared and it cost nothing. The only cost was getting it set up, that was a couple hundred for the appraisal and stuff.
Exactly. Take as much as you can and leave it as potential money. It’s been really helpful for me to have money when I need it with no hassle. I’ve taken big amounts as short term loans to myself a bunch of times, and it’s made complicated and stressful situations much easier.
I have no idea but I find it hilarious. it is either
a) complete satire of pro-capitalist America
b) dead serious pro-capitalist America
c) missing the mark of small businesses and communities working together
I’m glad others here also don’t know what it means. I figured everyone would be like “it means blah blah blah really simple thing” and I would feel even dumber.
