If you’re thinking about refinancing your home, you may want to look beyond the obvious applications of this cash injection, to see what else that kind of freed-up capital can do for you.

The main reason people go to see a mortgage refinance advisor is to get their home loan paid off, and then pay off the refinance loan at a lower rate, or on more favorable terms.  However, the equity in your home is yours to do with as you please, so if you can afford the current payments, or maybe even a bit more, there are a few great things you can do with this money.

1) Pay Off Your Credit Cards

This one’s a no-brainer, and it’s something you should consider doing with some of your home refinance anyway.  The size of your mortgage might seem daunting, and you might be hesitant to increase that, but the cost of your credit cards is something you can easily live without.

Credit card companies are great at masking how much their services actually cost you in interest and fees, so paying off a little credit card debt can go a long way.

2) Get Educated

Ask about any rich person and they’ll tell you that the best investment you can make is one in yourself.  Rather than taking out a student loan, why not apply for that MBA you’ve always wanted to do.  Perhaps take some technical courses at night school to learn how to build websites, or learn to teach English as a foreign language.

Another option is to use some of the money to pay off your child’s student debt, or to finally kill off the last of your own debt.  The only thing better than a low-interest student loan is not having a student loan at all.

3) Try a Carry Trade

Usually borrowing money to invest isn’t a smart idea, but there are exceptions. A carry trade is a financial technique that relies on the differences in interest rates between two countries to make you money.  Simply put you borrow money in a low-interest currency, say dollars, and you invest it in a one-year fixed deposit in a country with higher interest rates, like South Africa.

The object of the exercise is to make more in interest than you pay in interest, as well as fees and currency fluctuations.  The dollar is slowly losing value, especially against some developing world currencies, so this adds extra potential for earnings if your money is invested offshore.