Refinance Calculator

Divide the closing costs by the monthly saving, then round up to the next whole payment. $4,500 of costs against a $361 monthly saving is 12.5 payments, so you are ahead from month 13. If you sell or refinance again before then, the deal never repaid what it cost to arrange.

Because the payment falls for two different reasons and only one of them is a saving. A lower rate genuinely costs you less. A longer term just spreads the same debt over more months — refinancing 22 remaining years into a fresh 30-year loan adds 96 payments, and interest accrues on every one of them. At the default figures here the payment drops $361 a month and the total repaid rises by roughly $49,000.

Set the new term to the years you actually have left. That isolates the rate cut from the term reset, and whatever saving survives is real. If the shorter term makes the payment unaffordable, you have learned something useful: what you want is the cash-flow relief, and it has a price worth seeing.

Often, yes. Moving 22 remaining years to a 15-year loan usually raises the monthly payment, so there is no break-even month to reach at all — but it can cut tens of thousands from the lifetime interest. This calculator reports that case plainly rather than treating a higher payment as an automatic loss.

Typically origination or lender fees, an appraisal, title search and insurance, recording fees and prepaid escrow — commonly 2% to 5% of the loan. A "no-cost" refinance does not remove them; the lender pays them and recovers the money through a higher rate, so enter zero costs and the higher rate to compare that offer fairly.