Should I refinance my home now?

[OnionPatch]

I'm pretty clueless when it comes to financial stuff but I try. It's hard when you don't know where to turn for advice or who to trust. To be honest, I trust people here at DU more than some of the so-called experts. Well, maybe some of you are experts. If so, I could use some help, please.

We bought our home in 2003 at 5.8% interest on a 30-year, fixed-rate loan. Now I'm looking around and seeing as low as 4.9% rates on 30-year fixed loans. Or is there a catch to that? I read that it makes sense to refinance if the rate is 1% or more below your current rate, is this true? Our home value has dropped since we purchased but luckily we are not quite upside down yet. It's still worth more than we owe on it by 10-20K or even a little more. (We made a lot of improvements with our own labor.) If we refinance now, what should we look for? What will the fee be? Will it be worthwhile? Will it lower our payment or help us get the principal down? What schemes should we look out for? Would it be better to go through our credit union? We belong to Arrowhead CU in southern CA. We are in very good-standing there. Currently our home loan is with Countrywide.

Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[A HERETIC I AM]

1. No advice but here's a website with some calculators that may help you.

http://fincalc.com/

One of their mortgage calculators;

http://www.calcxml.com/do/hom02

[2Design]

2. other housing type links to information

www.patrick.net
www.thehousingbubbleblog.com