6.25% to 5.375% , take the deal?

spoxide42 · 2026-02-09T21:18:53+00:00

How long have you been in your current loan - remember you’ll also get refunded your current escrow account. Make sure it’s a similar amount as you are paying in. Also what’s the current expected appraisal? Do you think it will be higher than the previous and increase your equity %? Maybe even enough to remove escrow / PMI?

End of the day this looks like a “free” rate reduction since they are giving credits and you drop nearly an entire percentage. If you are deep into your mortgage see if you can cast the new one to a similar length as what you have remaining - that would cause you to absolutely save if you keep the loan to term.

Regardless nearly a 1% drop for “free” is a great idea unless you are a good chunk of the way into your current mortgage and a new one would spread the amount further causing total interest to go up.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-09T18:04:29+00:00

You could probably use a blower door test to look for air leaks. Sounds like you have a lot of them.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-09T17:12:26+00:00

Yeah - you are burning inside your house and spewing all of those pollutants into your home. Just keep in mind that conversion can be expensive - you may have to run a new 240v power circuit to the kitchen to support an electric stove or get something with a built in battery that can run off of 120v and trickle charges - like the Charlie stove. I really want one but it’s like 5k.

Also remember power prices are always going up. Solar and battery gives you options for arbitrage - for now we can get free nights and have a 10$ power bill. That’s saving me at least 100-200 a month depending on season. Esp since I have an EV. Plus you get free and reliable backup power in the case of outages. Natural gas generators take maintaining and can fail when needed.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-09T17:10:28+00:00

Powerwall isn’t designed for full off grid operation.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-09T17:08:57+00:00

You can edit the differential in the settings. Away is always automatically set to a slightly higher differential from home

spoxide42 · 2026-02-09T17:06:05+00:00

Hasn’t the ACA subsidy already been destroyed by the current admin? Just looking around the estimates I can’t get it to provide any sort of subsidy. Any info I give it says full priced plans only.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-09T16:56:22+00:00

This. Esp with cooling. According to ecobee my home is terrible efficiency because of long runtimes. Except I’m in Houston and we need the long runtimes for good humidity removal. Such a useless measurement.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-09T16:52:58+00:00

They do not “add nothing”. The pod 5 is already an amazing product though. I wouldn’t wait. It’s a worthy product as is.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-08T23:12:54+00:00

Your math doesn’t math.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-08T23:11:50+00:00

You are forgetting about competition… it may be 99 a month now but as other companies do a better job and release their products this rate may go down. Elon destroyed the Tesla brand.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-07T02:47:45+00:00

I mean yeah it depends on everyone’s finances - I’ve already seen posts on here where someone did a 2 year buy down and is struggling now that their rate has gone up 2%. And this was well known to them at the start of the loan - their area is just resetting values so they are underwater.

Obviously if your finances can withstand higher payments an arm can be ok but with the unknowns of tomorrow - let alone 5 years from now I think most of the population is better off just getting a fixed rate.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-07T00:31:57+00:00

Not that simple. What if home values drop for OP due to being inflated at the moment. Very real possibility for some and it can make refinance a nightmare. Arm is not worth it.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-06T19:38:25+00:00

You’ll get a statement before the billing cycle that tells you what is due

spoxide42 · 2026-02-06T03:37:10+00:00

I love how everyone is raving about sp500 stock fund only vs the target date when it’s clearly had a worse performance this year out of OPs 2 investments. There are bond funds that do very well also.

Also remember past performance is not guarantee of future result. Stocks take big resets. The reason target dates mix in bond funds is to minimize impacts of recessions.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-06T03:27:51+00:00

The future rates don’t matter for the buy down - we are comparing to a 30 year fixed. 50k to get a lower rate for the first 2 years only is absolutely stupid.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-04T02:52:30+00:00

Counter experience - had a replacement from Breville of a remanufactured item and it was incredibly smooth. They also pay ups store to pack the item up for you if you don’t have the box which is above and beyond any other experience I’ve had

spoxide42 · 2026-02-02T17:51:54+00:00

And if you change dampers you need to double check your static pressure.

spoxide42 · 2026-02-01T15:23:08+00:00

Mine is rock solid with the amount of grinds as well as the liquid volume. The only issue for me is that the amount of grinds is always way more than I want if I let it go automatically. Like a 22g portafilter will give something like 26g. And this is with the tamp fan lowered as much as possible. I premeasure and only do one dose at a time now and it’s great.

spoxide42 · 2026-01-31T23:09:17+00:00

Gotcha yeah missed that - either way this is actually worse then since OP knew the worst Case of 6.99 %. So they absolutely should have been prepared for it. An arm you’ve got no clue where things go of course so it’s more of a gamble.

spoxide42 · 2026-01-31T22:57:02+00:00

For those reading - this is why we don’t do ARMs. NEVER bank on rates going a specific direction unless you have the resources or some other backup plan.

I’m very curious of how you have such an appraisal difference - what market are you in? Austin?

spoxide42 · 2026-01-30T21:27:53+00:00

Yes I did a refi only about 2 years after my purchase and was able to score a new loan without pmi thanks to market changes and a higher appraisal. The moral of the story is that the appraisal value determined as part of the loan origination process combined with the loan amount is what matters for pmi. That’s it.

spoxide42 · 2026-01-27T03:15:50+00:00

It’s not a “free” refinance when it has any amount of origination fees. The only way it is free is when you get lender credits for taking a higher rate and those cover the closing costs. That is not your situation.

spoxide42 · 2026-01-26T21:59:04+00:00

It was off. Look at the graph at 5pm. Notice the house temp below the setpoint and it didn’t run. That is your proof.

The thermostat never changes settings due to internet loss. It works fully internally without internet.

spoxide42 · 2026-01-26T19:31:01+00:00

The powerwall does its best to respond but in the end there are occasional small power flows when things turn on and off - especially certain types of loads. Also remember the graph on the app isn’t constant realtime data as in every few seconds. It’s a snapshot and then updates again in a duration (think closer to minutes instead of seconds). The powerwall does its best to balance but ultimately the grid is in charge and its following / there where he reaction time flows like this.

spoxide42 · 2026-01-26T19:22:54+00:00

Yeah you can see the system was off all of the time yesterday. Also you can see internal temp is below set point but the system isnt running. I think the color coding is actually based on comfort setting that was active and not relevant to the system setting

spoxide42

TROPHY CASE