Refinance Calculator

Rates dropped, so you should refinance, right? Not necessarily. Refinancing swaps your loan for a new one at a lower rate, but you pay closing costs up front and recoup them slowly through a smaller monthly payment — so the decision turns on how long you'll keep the loan. There's a clean break-even month (closing costs divided by your monthly saving): keep the loan past it and the refinance paid for itself; sell, move, or refinance again before it and the closing costs were money down the drain. And there's a subtler trap. Refinancing almost always resets the term to a fresh 30 years, and a big chunk of your 'saving' is really just the same balance stretched over more years — which can pile on more total interest even at a lower rate. This lesson makes both visible: a chart that races the cost of keeping your loan against the cost of refinancing it, crossing at the break-even, plus the lifetime-interest reality check. The takeaway: a lower payment is not always less money, and the right move is often to take the lower rate but keep paying like you never refinanced.

Free and interactive — no sign-up, nothing to install. Read the full lesson for the plain-language explanation.