Refinancing from a 15 to a 10, to a 30-year Mortgage

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Why would you refinance a mortgage twice in just three years? My family went from a 15-year to a 10-year to a 30-year fixed mortgage in a short time. Here’s why we decided to refinance so many times.

Starting with a 15-year Term

In July 2018, my family moved from New England to a little college town near Charlotte, North Carolina.

We decided to buy a two-story brick in a country club neighborhood because of the pool, tennis courts, and walking trails the area provided.

We’d bought our previous house in New Hampshire with a 15-year mortgage.

There were many reasons why:

• to pay down the equity in our home as quickly as we could
• to discipline ourselves to spend a more reasonable amount on housing
• to get ourselves to save money with a “forced” savings plan-that is, locking ourselves into a fixed expense mortgage while building equity

For us, a 15-year mortgage scored an interest rate of roughly half a percentage point less than a 30-year, or about 4%, when we took…