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. This makes it take longer to pay off your home. 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.