PMI Math: The Exact Month It Falls Off (I Ran the Schedule)
By De Van Do -- March 4, 2026 -- 8 min read
Why I Went Looking for a Specific Month
PMI is explained almost everywhere in percentages. You pay it under 20% down. It comes off at 80% loan to value. It cancels automatically at 78%. All true, and all useless when you are sitting there wondering how many more years you personally are going to be paying it.
What I wanted was a month number. Not a rule, a date. So I loaded a realistic low down payment purchase into the amortization visualizer and read the balance curve until it crossed the thresholds.
The answer turned out to contain a gap I had not expected, and that gap is worth real money to anyone who knows it is there.
The Purchase I Modeled
A $500,000 home with 10% down. That means $50,000 at closing and a $450,000 loan, 30 year fixed at 7%. Principal and interest come to about $2,994 a month.
For the PMI premium I used 0.7% of the loan balance per year, which works out to about $262 a month at the start. That is the figure the calculators on this site use for a borrower at 90% loan to value. PMI pricing is driven mostly by your credit score and your down payment, and the spread is wide. A 760 score at 10% down can land well under 0.5%, while a 660 score at 3.5% down can land well above 1%. Mine sits deliberately in the middle. Check your own loan estimate rather than trusting my number.
One more modeling note. Lenders calculate the cancellation thresholds against the original value, meaning the lower of the purchase price or the original appraisal, not against whatever the home is worth later. That matters, and I come back to it.
Month 101 and Month 115
Running the schedule with no extra payments, here is where the balance lands.
The loan crosses 80% of the original value, meaning a balance of $400,000, at month 101. That is 8 years and 5 months in. At that point you have the right to request cancellation in writing.
The loan crosses 78%, a balance of $390,000, at month 115. That is 9 years and 7 months in. At that point the servicer is required to terminate PMI on its own, without you doing anything.
Fourteen months separate those two events. At $262 a month, that gap is worth about $3,675.
That is the finding. Nearly three thousand seven hundred dollars sitting between the month you are allowed to ask and the month they are obliged to stop. The only thing standing in the gap is a letter. Most borrowers never send it, because nobody ever tells them there is a date to send it on, and the servicer has no reason to volunteer one.
Mark month 101 on a calendar. That is the whole strategy.
What You Are Paying For, and What It Is Not
Worth stating plainly, because the name misleads almost everyone who encounters it.
Private mortgage insurance does not insure you. If you stop paying and the lender forecloses and the sale does not cover the balance, the insurer pays the lender. You are still liable for whatever is left over. You pay every month for a policy whose sole beneficiary is the institution that lent you the money.
It exists because loans above 80% loan to value default at higher rates, and the insurance is what makes those loans sellable into the secondary market. Without PMI, the low down payment mortgage largely would not exist as a product. That is the honest defense of it, and it is a real one.
But it changes how you should think about the monthly cost. Interest buys you the use of the money. Property tax buys you local services. Insurance on the structure protects your asset. PMI buys you nothing at all except access to the loan, and the moment you no longer need that access you should stop paying for it.
That is why the fourteen month gap above stings more than the raw dollar figure suggests. It is not fourteen months of overpaying for something. It is fourteen months of paying for nothing.
What Extra Principal Does to the Date
Because the thresholds are balance based, anything that pulls the balance down faster pulls the date forward. I ran the same loan with extra monthly principal.
An extra $200 a month reaches 80% at month 72, which is 6 years. That is 29 months sooner than the baseline, worth about $7,612 in PMI you never pay.
An extra $300 a month reaches it at month 63, 5 years and 3 months, which is 38 months sooner and about $9,975 of avoided PMI.
An extra $500 a month reaches it at month 50, 4 years and 2 months, 51 months sooner and about $13,388 avoided.
This is the one case where extra principal has a second payoff stacked on top of the interest saving. Normally an extra dollar toward principal buys you exactly the future interest that dollar would have accrued. Here it also buys you an earlier exit from a monthly fee that is doing nothing for you at all. PMI protects the lender, not you. Every month you shave off it is pure recovery.
How the Premium Is Actually Priced
I used 0.7% a year, which matches the calculators on this site, but the spread is wide enough that your own rate deserves a look before you plan around any of this.
Two inputs dominate. Your credit score and your loan to value at origination. The pricing grid is roughly continuous in both, so a 780 score at 10% down and a 640 score at 3.5% down can differ by a factor of four or more on the same loan amount. Coverage requirements also step up as your down payment shrinks, which compounds the effect.
A few structural variants exist too. Borrower paid monthly is the default and the one modeled here. Single premium lets you pay the whole thing upfront or roll it into the loan, which can make sense if you are confident about a long hold but leaves nothing to cancel later. Lender paid PMI is not free despite the name, it is bought with a permanently higher interest rate, and because it is baked into the rate it never falls off. Split premium sits between the two.
The important thing for planning purposes is that only the borrower paid monthly version has a cancellation date at all. If you take lender paid PMI in exchange for a slightly lower payment today, the entire strategy in this article stops applying to you. There is no month 101. Check which one you have been quoted before you build a plan around cancelling it.
The Routes That Skip the Schedule Entirely
Everything above assumes you ride the amortization curve down. There are ways around it.
A new appraisal. If your home has appreciated, many servicers will let you cancel based on current value rather than original value, typically requiring 20% or 25% equity depending on how long you have held the loan. This is the fastest route in a rising market, and it costs an appraisal fee of a few hundred dollars. Ask your servicer for their specific seasoning and equity requirements in writing before you order anything.
Documented improvements. Substantial renovations can support a value based cancellation earlier than time alone would.
Refinancing. If you are refinancing anyway and you are above 20% equity, the new loan simply has no PMI on it. Do not refinance solely to kill PMI though. Run that against the breakeven math, because closing costs will usually swamp the premium you are trying to escape.
One important exception. FHA loans are different. On most FHA loans originated since 2013, the mortgage insurance premium lasts the entire life of the loan if you put less than 10% down, and none of the conventional cancellation rules apply. The only exit is refinancing into a conventional loan. If you are weighing FHA against conventional, that permanence belongs in the comparison, and it is the single most expensive detail people miss.
When Chasing PMI Is the Wrong Move
PMI feels like an insult, which makes it easy to over prioritize. A few situations where I would not rush it.
You have higher interest debt. PMI at 0.7% of the balance is annoying but it is not 22% credit card interest. Clear the expensive debt first.
You have no emergency fund. Money you push into principal to reach 80% faster is locked in the walls. You cannot get it back without refinancing or selling. Reserves come first.
You would be putting 20% down purely to dodge PMI while draining yourself to closing. A larger down payment does more than avoid PMI, but arriving at closing with nothing left is a worse position than paying $262 a month for eight years.
You are within a year or two of selling. If the loan is not going to live to month 101, the strategy has nothing to act on.
And the honest one: PMI is what let you buy the house at all. A borrower who waits four more years to save a full 20% has paid four years of rent and faced four years of price movement. That trade is frequently worse than the premium.
Find Your Own Month
The specific months above belong to one loan. Yours depends on your balance, your rate, your term, and your original value, and all four move the date.
Put your actual loan into the amortization visualizer and read the balance curve. Find the month where it crosses 80% of your original purchase price, and the month where it crosses 78%. Write both down.
The first one is a task, not a milestone. On that month, send your servicer a written cancellation request. Be current on payments, have no second lien, and ask them in advance what documentation they want, because some will require an appraisal to confirm the value has not dropped.
The second date is your backstop if the first one goes nowhere. Knowing both means you are never the borrower who paid an extra fourteen months because nobody told them there was a letter to send.
Find your own PMI drop-off month in the Amortization Visualizer
Watch the balance curve and see exactly when you cross 80% of the original value.
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Down Payment Strategies: How Much to Put Down and Where to Get It
A complete guide to down payment strategies -- 3% vs 5% vs 20%, how to save faster, gift funds, down payment assistance programs, and the PMI math.
The Real Math Behind Extra Mortgage Payments (I Ran the Numbers)
What an extra $100, $300, or $500 a month actually does to a $400,000 loan: payoff date, total interest saved, and why biweekly payment plans are just one extra payment in disguise.
Why Your Mortgage Barely Shrinks for Years (I Ran the Amortization Schedule)
Using a real $400,000 loan: how mortgage payments split between interest and principal, why you still owe 74% at the halfway point, and how to fight front-loading.
About the author
De Van Do has a background in technology and built VisualMortgage out of curiosity about making mortgage math transparent. De Van Do is not a licensed loan officer or mortgage broker -- for advice specific to your situation, consult a licensed mortgage professional. Read more about VisualMortgage.