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Cash-flow relief is not the same as savings
This is the single most misread tradeoff in farm debt, and it is the reason LoanHank refuses one particular word.
The worked example
Take a balance of $327,840 at 7.85%, paid annually, with four payments left. The scheduled payment is about $98,651 a year and the projected remaining interest is about $66,766.
Now stretch the same balance over ten years at 5.90%. The annual payment falls to about $44,332 — roughly $54,319 a year of freed cash flow. Over the full ten years the projected interest is about $115,482, which is about $48,716 more interest than the current structure.
Both statements are true at once. The annual burden dropped a lot and the lifetime cost rose a lot. Calling the first number “savings” without the second is the part that misleads.
Why the longer term can still be the right call
Freed working capital has real value. It can cover an operating gap, avoid a more expensive short-term borrowing, or simply keep a year survivable. That is a legitimate reason to accept more total interest — provided the decision is made knowing the price. The failure mode is not choosing the longer term; it is choosing it while believing it costs less.
The clean comparison
If you want to know whether a different rate genuinely improves total economics, hold the remaining term constant and change only the rate. At 6.85% over the same four payments, the payment falls to about $96,460 and projected interest falls to about $58,000: about $2,191 a year of relief and about $8,766 less interest. Both move the same direction. That is a total-cost improvement, and LoanHank says so in those terms.
Two break-even rates, never merged
A payment break-even rate is the rate at which a candidate structure produces the same periodic payment you have now. A total-cost break-even rate is the rate at which projected total cash outflow matches what you are on track to pay. They are different numbers answering different questions, so LoanHank reports them separately and labels each.