My husband served for years in the Army. While he was stationed overseas, I saved all the money I could. When he came back, we bought our first house. We had a great down payment and our credit was excellent, so we opted for a conventional loan. Our interest rate was 6.25% and the payments each month were reachable. When we heard about the new lower interest rates for veterans, we wanted to learn more. After contacting a loan officer, he created a couple of quotes and presented us with options to save. We shaved $200 a month off our payments and started a savings account for our baby’s college fund. In 18 years, when she is ready to go, we will have $43,000! While that might not get her all the way through college, it is a heck of a start!

Sandra K.--Kentucky

My wife and I purchased our home before I joined the Army. It was, and still is, our dream house! I never thought that my service could help me with saving for our future. My buddy told me about his VA loan and the better interest rate he had just gotten. Our interest rate wasn’t too high and our payments were okay, but the thought of saving any money was appealing. I found some websites online and filled out a request for a quote. The loan officer that contacted me had some new offers, and some options I had never thought of. We refinanced our conventional 30 year mortgage into a VA loan 15 year and lowered our interest rate. Since we didn’t have any problems making our previous payments, we weren’t too concerned about raising our payment. Our payment went up $200 but we will finish paying off our home in 15 years! My wife and I made a plan to keep saving the house payment for 15 more years, just like we would have paid, and will have about $200,000. Pretty good start for retirement savings!

Jarred & Tammy W.--Idaho

I refinanced my conventional home loan to a VA loan last year. My interest rate was so high that it was getting difficult to make my monthly payments. My wife’s full time job was cut to part time and bills were piling up. I talked to a loan officer and he suggested refinancing using my VA eligibility. After we looked into it, we discovered that I could be saving $500 a month! My wife and I jumped at the chance to save that money. Luckily, she got a new full time job, so now we are able to save money each month. We are looking forward to a vacation at the end of the year! This is the smartest thing we have ever done. We tell all our veteran friends to look into the VA home loan program.

Richard M.--Arkansas

My husband and I both proudly served in the Air Force. When we decided to buy a house, there was no question whether or not to use our VA eligibility. We bought our house a couple of years ago and have enjoyed living in the green lushness of Oregon. Recently, we discovered our home was suffering due to the dampness of our area and we needed to do some improvements. We didn’t have the immediate funds in our savings so we looked into a Cash-Out refinance. We figured the house could pay for its own repairs! We used the cash from our refinance to repair the roof, install energy efficient appliances and windows and some additional landscaping. There was even money left over to paint the inside and replace a couple of pieces of furniture. Now our house value has gone up due to the improvements and we are saving money each month on our electric and gas bills. This was the only way we could have gotten all this work done at once.

Brian & Karen Y.--Oregon

My wife and I were sinking under all our debt. Our credit was starting to suffer and we were looking at selling our house to pay off all our bills. The only thing that held us back was the fact that we worked so hard for our house; the thought of losing it was more than my wife could bear. We looked into a Cash-Out refinance to see if it could help us. A loan officer took our information and gave us the news that we so desperately needed. We refinanced our house and got enough money to pay off all our credit card debts and part of our car. Our house payment did go up, but we still ended up saving each month. A lower interest rate and no credit card bills makes for happy home-owners. My wife even smiled last month as we paid the bills because it only took a couple of minutes instead of an hour to write all the checks. We are working a little harder but every minute is worth it!

Jeffrey & Lori A.--Nevada