One caveat first: a 30-year and a 15-year aren't the same product, so there's no clean apples-to-apples break-even. A 15-year usually carries a lower rate, but the payment goes up because you're compressing the payoff into half the time. Savings here means interest saved over the life of the loan; the monthly payment itself rises. Our usual take: if the closing costs are steep, skip the refinance and make extra principal payments as if you already had the 15-year. Set up an amortization schedule, add the extra to principal each month, and you capture most of the interest savings without paying a dime in closing costs, while keeping the ability to fall back to the lower required 30-year payment if money gets tight. That fallback matters, and a cautionary story shows why. We know of a household that refinanced from a 30-year into a lower-rate 15-year during the ultra-low-rate stretch, feeling great about it. Then one spouse lost their job. They were locked into the bigger 15-year payment on half the income, ran up tens of thousands in debt over the year it took to find work, and ended up taking a much higher-rate 30-year just to consolidate and get the payment manageable again. The mandatory higher payment turned a good idea into a trap. A 15-year can be a great loan for someone in a genuinely strong position: solid reserves, real equity, retirement savings intact. Otherwise, keep the 30-year and pay it down on your own schedule. Nobody can promise you'll be able to refinance your way out later, and either way, the right loan is the one you can live with.