Cash Out Refinance Calculator

What this calculator does

A cash out refinance replaces your current mortgage with a new, bigger one, and hands you the difference in cash. You are borrowing against the equity you have built in your home. It can be a smart move or an expensive one, and the difference usually hides in the numbers you do not bother to compare.

This tool puts your current loan and the proposed new loan side by side. You enter the details of both, plus how much cash you want to pull out and what the refinance costs, and it shows you the new payment, the new total interest, and how the whole picture shifts. It is built to make the tradeoff visible before you decide.

How a cash out refinance works

Here is the mechanic in one line: your new loan equals your current balance plus the cash you take out.

So if you owe 200,000 and you want 50,000 in cash, you take out a new loan of 250,000. The lender pays off your old 200,000, and you pocket the 50,000. The catch is that you now owe more than you did, and you often restart the clock with a fresh term at a new rate. That combination, a bigger balance stretched over a longer time, is exactly why the total cost can balloon even when it feels like you are just borrowing your own equity back.

A worked example: pulling out 50,000

Say your current loan has 200,000 left, over 25 years, at 4.5%. Your monthly payment on that is 1,111.66. Now you refinance to pull out 50,000, taking a new loan of 250,000 over 30 years at 6%, with a 1% origination fee and 2,000 in other refinancing costs.

The new monthly payment becomes 1,498.88. So your payment goes up by about 387 a month. That part most people expect. The part they do not expect is the interest. Over its life, your current loan would cost about 133,499 in interest. The new loan would cost about 289,595. That is roughly 156,096 more interest, to put 50,000 in your pocket today.

None of that makes a cash out refinance wrong. Sometimes the cash is worth it, for example to clear a much higher-interest debt or to fund something that genuinely pays off. But you should see the full price of the cash before you take it, and 50,000 now for 156,000 more in interest later is a trade you want to make with your eyes open, not by accident.

Reading the comparison table

The result is laid out as a table with three columns: your current loan, the new loan, and the difference between them. Each row is a number worth checking against the others: the principal, the monthly payment, the interest rate, the term, the total interest, and the total payments.

The column to watch is the difference. It tells you, in plain numbers, exactly what changes. A bigger principal, very often a longer term, and a much larger total interest are the usual pattern. The reason the total interest jumps so hard is almost always the term. Resetting a loan you were 5 years into back out to a fresh 30 years means you start paying mostly interest all over again, on a larger balance. The rate matters, but the length of the loan is usually what does the damage.

The costs, and the cash you actually keep

Refinancing is not free. There is usually an origination fee, charged as a percentage of the new loan, plus other closing costs. In the example, the 1% origination fee on the 250,000 new loan is 2,500, and with the 2,000 in other costs the calculator reports a total cost of refinancing of 4,500.

One thing to be clear-eyed about: this tool adds your full cash-out amount to the balance and lists the refinancing costs separately, rather than subtracting them from the cash you receive. In the real world those costs often come out of your pocket or out of the cash proceeds, so the money you actually walk away with can be less than the headline cash-out figure. Read the cost of refinancing line as the price of doing the deal, and mentally take it off the cash you expect to keep.

The real risk worth pausing on

This is the part a calculator cannot put in a cell, so it goes here. When you do a cash out refinance, the money you borrow is secured by your home. That is what makes the rate lower than a credit card or a personal loan, but it is also the danger. If you use the cash to pay off unsecured debts and then cannot keep up with the larger mortgage, you have turned debt that could not take your house into debt that can. The CFPB has flagged exactly this: paying non-mortgage debts with mortgage debt can raise the risk of foreclosure.

Two more honest notes. Lenders usually cap how much you can pull out, commonly around 80% of your home's value, and this tool does not check that limit for you, so confirm your own borrowing ceiling with a lender. And because refinancing resets the clock, the long-run cost can outweigh the short-run relief. If you are weighing options, the LTV calculator helps you gauge how much equity you can tap, and the mortgage calculator and amortization calculator let you sanity-check the new loan on its own.

How to use this calculator

Enter your current loan first, then the refinance details:

• Current Loan Amount, Term, and Interest Rate. Your existing loan. Use the balance and years remaining, since the results apply to the remaining part of the loan.
• Cash Out Amount. How much cash you want to pull out. This gets added to your balance to form the new loan.
• New Loan Term and New Interest Rate. The terms of the loan you are refinancing into.
• Origination Fee. The lender's fee as a percentage of the new loan.
• Cost of Refinancing. Any other closing costs, as a flat amount.

Press Calculate for the side-by-side comparison. Press Reset to clear every field.

What this calculator assumes (and leaves out)

• It does not check how much you can borrow. There is no home-value or loan-to-value limit here, so it will happily calculate a cash-out larger than a real lender would allow. Confirm your actual limit separately.
• It lists costs separately, not netted from your cash. The cash-out amount is added to the balance in full, and the fees are shown apart, so the cash you truly keep is usually the cash-out minus those costs.
• It does not compute a break-even. It shows the costs and the new payment, but not the point at which a refinance pays for itself, so you will need to weigh the cost of the cash against its value yourself.
• It assumes fixed rates and full terms. Both loans are treated as fixed-rate and carried to the end of their terms. Taxes and insurance are not included.

So use this to compare the shape of the two loans, then take the specifics to a lender. It is an estimate for planning, not financial advice, and a cash out refinance is a decision where talking to someone qualified is well worth it.

Questions people ask

What is a cash out refinance?

It is a new mortgage that is larger than the one you currently owe. The new loan pays off your old balance, and you receive the difference as cash, borrowed against your home equity.

Why does my total interest go up so much?

Usually because of the term. Refinancing often restarts the loan over a fresh, longer period on a larger balance, so you begin paying mostly interest again. The longer term tends to add more to the lifetime cost than the rate does.

How much cash can I take out?

Lenders typically limit it to around 80% of your home's value, though this varies. This calculator does not enforce that cap, so check your real borrowing limit with a lender before relying on a large cash-out figure.

Is a cash out refinance worth it?

It can be, if the cash is worth more to you than the added lifetime interest, for instance clearing a much higher-rate debt. It is riskier when it turns unsecured debt into debt secured by your home. Compare the full cost here and weigh it honestly.

References

The description of how cash out refinancing works and, in particular, the risk of paying non-mortgage debts with debt secured by your home follow the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's research and consumer guidance on refinancing.

1. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cash-out refinance mortgage borrowers: research and findings. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-report-finds-cash-out-mortgage-refinance-borrowers-improve-credit-scores/
2. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Ask CFPB: refinancing. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/search-by-tag/refinance/