Philadelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. The city hosted the First Continental Congress before the war the Second Continental Congress, which signed the United States Declaration of Independence, during the war and the Constitutional Convention after the war. Several battles were fought in and near Philadelphia as well. After the war, Philadelphia served as the new United States' capital in the 1790s. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed as many as 5,000 people in Philadelphia, roughly 10% of the population. Philadelphia also is the largest city in Pennsylvania and the sixth-most-populous city in the United States. In 2008, the population of the city proper was estimated to be over 1.4 million,while the Greater Philadelphia metropolitan area's population of 5.8 million made it the country's fifth-largest. The city is the nation's fourth-largest urban area by population and its fourth-largest consumer media market as ranked by the Nielsen Media Research.

A home-equity loan is basically a line of credit secured by your home. When the line of credit is drawn down, the financial institution providing it places a second mortgage loan on your home until the loan is paid off, after which the you can use the loan to finance other purchases. However, if the loan is not paid off, your home could be sold to pay off the remaining debt. Interest rates on such loans are usually adjustable rather than fixed and lower than standard second mortgages or credit cards.