Electricity is one thing that is not cheap in the Philippines. Meralco customers in Manila are reporting huge increases in their latest April 2010 electric bills. Like increases to P13.25 ($0.294) per kWh.
PMI is not a cost you have to pay for throughout the life of your loan. You can eventually cancel private mortgage insurance, once your principal balance drops to 80% or less of your home's original purchase price or the amount you financed in a refinance loan. This reduces the size of the loan that you can use for the home purchase or the size of the refi loan that you qualify for. 2  It is not tax deductible, unlike the interest that you pay on the money you borrow to buy a home or to finance a refinance loan on a traditional mortgage.
Every time you refinance your home you restart the clock and pay less principal. One way to mitigate this problem is to refinance to a shorter-term loan. For instance, a 10-year-old $200,000 30-year mortgage at seven percent carries a monthly payment of $1,331. If you were to refinance the remaining $171,953 balance for 20 years at 5 percent, you would pay the loan off in the same amount of time and save almost $200 a month based on the new payment of $1,135.