we financed our home 10 years ago on a 30 year fixed note, then refinanced 6 years ago to a 20 year note. Our current rate is 5.25. Our home value is now 130K and we owe approximately 84K on it.
So...if we can get a rate of 3.5 or lower fixed on a 10 year note, should we do it? Will it benefit us enough to justify the costs of the refi?
we have a really high credit rating, so I think we would qualify
I really want to knock the years down to get it paid off ASAP.
I'll tell you what we did. Banks don't ever offer this suggestion but they do it. We refi'd our small mortgage balance to a home equity line instead because it had no closing costs & we knew we would be paying it off very fast.
And we did. Mortgage & debt free for about 6 years now. The line is still open if we ever want to use it, but we don't. Rate is 3.25% variable. And yes, we are responsible for saving for our own taxes which isn't a problem.
Thing is though, amount due each month is very small. You have to be disciplined enough to PAY a large amount you calculated to get out of debt on schedule. I didn't have a problem with this. Every extra penny went to them because I wanted to be done owning people. It was a fun game and we won!
Ask the bank if they will do that. Person might not know & might have to asking lending supervisor because no one thinks of doing it for some reason.
