While some would have you believe you should be buying a vacation home now so that you can use home equity to pay for your kids' college in 5 years ..

others have a far different view of the merits of wrecklessly using home equity.

How about doing it the old-fashioned way where you save a little money every month to pay for future needs? I suppose that has become a foreign concept to everyone who wants everything right now and will worry about the consequences later. Or maybe that is just what everyone in the "industry" and media is telling them to do.

Don't forget to check back to Dan's Deep Creek Blog for future updates.