Is a refi ever worth it for a .5% APR drop?

[Anonymous]

Ok I have it together but I need to know your original loan balance from day 1, your current payoff balance, and how many payments you have left to make.  Then I can share the results.

Using made up data:

[Anonymous]

Cleaned it up a bit and triple checked my math with other sites.  In order to calculate your situation, I need to know YOUR values for all of the yellow background cells here:

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Shoot those values off in a comment and we can figure out what works best for you.

[NC_Mtg_Loaner]

Switching to a 15 yr. loan now isn't going to cost him much more than $200 a month more than what he pays now--not including any of the extra principle he's been paying or has paid so far.

The long term savings is basically the six years he'll no longer be paying $650 for this current mortgage loan(Assuming his payment now is $850 and subtracting the $200 he would have to pay if he prepaid that $200 in his new 15 year loan carrying a $1050 payment )  minus the $3000 in closing costs. 

My guess is $50k, but I wanted to go back to the opportunity cost of not investing this extra $200 a month elsewhere that can grow @ 10% compounded annually for this same 15 years because you could amass $80k that could generate $8000 in annual income (or growth) that you can use to pay your current mortgage with anyway which would result in not really having a mortgage payment at all.   

(Save $200 / mo. for 21 years compounded at 10% you'll have $161,286 saved, $0 mortgage owed if you decide to just keep paying your regular payment to the bank and keep saving and earning elsewhere)

Just an argument to diversify your investments.....

oh, and to not begin drinking at 6:15 in the morning.

[Dalmus]

Unless it's a good bloody Mary. That's socially acceptable to do in the morning.

The only downside to investing is that you either have to be motivated to learn about and monitor investments (not for everybody) or be willing to pay an advisor to do that for you. Not saying that's a bad thing, just mentioning it.