Should you refinance your mortgage?

Whenever interest rates drop, the appeal of refinancing your mortgage grows. But it's important to know the real costs -- and potential savings -- before making a move.

To help, U.S. News has teamed up with HSH Associates, a leading publisher of mortgage and consumer loan information, to offer this easy-to-use, interactive refinancing worksheet. Homeowners can see how their existing mortgage payments might change if they were to refinance, and, just as important, how long it would take to recover any closing costs associated with refinancing.

Instructions. Just fill in the non-colored boxes with the requested information. As you tab or mouse-click through the boxes, your results will appear automatically in the colored boxes. You can change any of your entries, in case you want to try several different scenarios, but you must tab or mouse-click to another box to update your results. To use the worksheet, JavaScript must be enabled on your browser.

Prepaying: if you want to see the effect of prepayments on a mortgage, we recommend you download
The Home Buyer's Calculator for Windows. It's free, courtesy of Wheatworks Software.

This worksheet was created by U.S. News in conjunction with HSH Associates.