Sunday, December 21, 2008

Refinancing Calculator

I'm actually pretty proud of the utility of this calculator. I hope you find it as helpful as I have in finding the interest rate needed to make refinancing make sense.

Loan Balance: $
Lender Fees: $
Fixed Costs: $
Points:
Total Closing Costs: Your javascript is disabled.

Finance Closing Costs:
Final Loan Balance: Your javascript is disabled.

Current loan information:
Monthly payment: $
Current rate:



Show rates:
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Your javascript is disabled.


First off, I apologize for any style issues. Using blogger has it's drawbacks, especially when putting scripts or styles in a post - the formatting has to be unreadable or the automatic line-breaks-to-br-tags conversion makes them not work at all. I also can't make the table any wider without really screwing things up, apparently. Now, on to the explanation:

Hopefully all the columns are self-explanatory except the last few. The "Monthly Savings" column refers to the difference in total payment amounts. The adjacent "Months to Recoup Costs" column uses this value to figure out how many months it would take before your out-of-pocket costs are back in your pocket. Thus, this column is best used when you are NOT financing your closing costs as part of the new loan.

The "Monthly Interest Savings" column is how much less (or more) interest you pay per month as part of your monthly payment. When you finance the closing costs, then, the last "Months to Recoup Costs" column shows how many months it will take to get the new loan balance back to your current loan's levels.

Any comments or suggestions on how to improve this post? Barring blogger limitations, I will do my best!

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