If your premise is that rates might drop soon, both options carry the same flaw: they're sunk costs. A lump-sum upfront mortgage insurance payment and points paid to buy down the rate are both money you spend now and never get back. Refinance later and neither one is refunded. So the decision in front of you is whether to spend any non-refundable money up front at all when you think a refinance may be coming. If you believe a refinance is reasonably likely, keeping your cash (monthly MI, no buydown) preserves the most flexibility. That fits our general lean anyway: we're biased against paying points, and we'd rather see you hold reserves than bury cash in an upfront cost a refinance would wipe out. Nobody can promise rates actually drop, so weigh it as a probability, never a certainty. One footnote: refundable upfront mortgage insurance technically exists, where a portion comes back if you cancel early, but it's priced higher and we've essentially never seen it used in practice. It isn't a real answer to this trade-off. Before committing any lump sum, run the break-even against how long you realistically expect to keep the loan. We'll put the versions side by side in the free Roadmap conversation (about 20 minutes) if you want to see them on paper.