So FHA requirements...

It appears that since our initial home loan is for thirty years, something about the FHA loan thing doesn't allow us to set up a fifteen-year refinanced mortgage. I'm not really sure how/why this is, but the loan officer crunched the numbers for us and said we could opt for a slightly higher payment the first five years to accomplish essentially the same thing. Basically, we'll be getting a thirty-year mortgage at a 4.25% interest rate (versus the 6% we currently have) and just tacking on about $300/month to the required payment. I want to check and see if that's really going to add up to progress before we decide for sure whether to go through with this, because we're losing what little progress we've made on paying off the loan by getting closing costs and fees incorporated into the new loan.

I suspect that the 4.25% interest rate will still make it a good idea, but it never hurts to check, I guess. :goes to Google Dave Ramsey mortgage calculator: Hmm. Tacking on $250/month to our current payment (net result the same as putting an extra $300 on the other amount) looks like it would lead to the same results. I wish I were better at understanding how this works. Is it possible that the decrease in the loan percentage would really just be lost in taking back the debt? Hmm, well, I just told Josh what my numbers say and he agrees that it looks like refinancing is pointless. So he's going to tell the loan officer we're just going to leave things as is.

Ha. Oh well. Such is life. It never hurts to look into these things, right? And I guess in the end this is where self-discipline is the route to success since we don't technically have foreclosure looming if we fail to make one of our extra payments. :-P Okay, now that I've figured that out, it's time to stick my child in bed and head to the living room for couch time with Josh. :-D