Releasing equity from your home is a hot topic lately. Owning your own home is one of those watershed moments in your life that tells you that you’re doing OK. When we first move away from our parents, many of us do so on a rental basis. It’s a few years later that we buy our first property – often shortly after we’ve settled down into a long-term relationship or got married. Our homes are our security, and a house we own is a place we’ve decided to stay for the long term and put down roots. If you’ve saved, sweated, and sacrificed for years to pay off the mortgage on your home and own it outright, you’re probably very proud of yourself. You’re also probably feeling less financially stressed than you used to! For many people, mortgage payments are the single largest expense we deal with every month. Once the mortgage is paid and that financial commitment is gone, our monthly expenditure drops. That means more money to spend on the things we like! For the above reasons, the idea of then charging a debt against your house again so you can release equity from it might sound counter…