About to Refinance My Mortgage

[Spence]

$150 is the norm now. Did you refinance to get it taken off? With a sub prime you would probably want to so I understand if you did refinance.

No, the bank sent us a letter saying we could finally request to have it taken off. We got lucky though, we got a foreclosure that was only a 4 year old house with no damages or anything during the middle of the crash when nobody was looking. $72k was the sale price and Zillow (without knowing about any of the upgrades we’ve since done) estimates the house to be valued at about $180k, we have $29k left to pay and should be done this upcoming March since we are throwing the whole tax refund bag at it trying to get out of this note so we can rent this place out then move.

 

[charknicks]

You didn't need to refinance to cut three years off your mortgage or pay an additional $30/month. You can pay just 1 additional payment a year and knock 7 years off your mortgage and that's just 1 path there are multiple ways to shorten that mortgage without refinancing.

True. I didnt need to. But just for refinancing, I will shave 3 years off, in addition to the $100/month extra that I have been putting in there. So at the end of the day, it will be closer to 6-7 years off.

Interest rate is going from 4.25 down to 2.95, so Im saving thousands in interest in addition to the months being cut off.

 

[bourgeoisie tall freak]

i feel like if i want to pay my mortgage off soon, that refinance fee can be better spent on principal that will be more than whatever interest i save before i pay it off. does anyone know any free refinance offers?

i looked this up. apparently this is called a "recast" if you are looking to make extra payments to gain lower payments after the bank re-calculates, and in effect you pay less interest. they reamortize the mortgage and figure out a new payment amount if the principle balance is ahead of schedule.
they say there is a fee to request this but i feel like my mortgage holders just do it automatically once a year.

 

[SwagKingKong]

Wait, some of your numbers are mind blowing for me as a non-american. Whats the typical interest rates on mortages and student loans in the US?

The interest rate on my mortage is 1.29% and 0.05% on my student loans.