lowered my cost of borrowing

As I've previously mentioned, last year I began borrowing money inside a line of credit and investing the funds in dividend paying stocks as the market took a nosedive. I deployed the majority of the money between October 6, 2008 and February 26, 2009. I should have instead invested all of the money in early March, 2009, but I'm just not that good...

The only piece of this strategy that continued to bother me was the fact that I was paying an interest rate of prime + 3% on an unsecured line of credit from a major bank. Even though I am able to claim this interest on my taxes, I was still unhappy with this rate. After attempting to negotiate a lower rate with a few banks on an unsecured line of credit, I decided to go instead with a home equity line of credit secured against our home.

I've just completed the process of opening a home equity line of credit with President's Choice Financial (CIBC Bank). The process was fairly easy and I was quite pleased with PC's price of $150 to open this loan. This option compared very favourably to the fees asked for by two other banks. On the eventual occasion that I close out this loan with PC I will be required to pay a $225 closing fee. The rate on this loan is prime + 1%, currently 3.25%.

Overall this dramatically decreases my cost of borrowing and I will make up the total fees of $375 in mere months. Writing off this interest at 3.25% makes this pretty close to free money.