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When John and Goldie Oliver learned they could cut the life of their mortgage in half and pay just $25 extra a month, they jumped at the opportunity.

The Olivers, a Broken Arrow family with three children and another on the way, are refinancing their 30-year mortgage with 15-year debt, taking advantage of a two-month plunge in interest rates that has driven home loan rates to 17-month lows. Over the life of the loan, they’ll wind up saving about $116,860 because they refinanced.

“We wanted a shorter-term, lower-interest rate loan that we could pay down in the next six to seven years,” said John Oliver, a 39- year-old swimming pool contractor. “If we pull it all off, I’ll probably be able to retire at age 50.” Tens of thousands of U.S. homeowners are doing the same thing each week, taking out new mortgages and refinancing old ones. Homeowners are refinancing at triple the rate of this time last year. “Managing your debt is for many people one of the most important aspects of financial planning,” said Ray Ferrara, a certified financial planner at ProVise Management Group in Clearwater, Fla. “Given that rates are as low as they are, it would make a great deal of sense for people to refinance if they have significant debt.” Last week, homeowners were borrowing at average rates of 7.64 percent for 30-year mortgages, 7.25 percent for 15-years, and 5.90 percent for one-year adjustable-rate loans, according to preliminary figures from BanxQuote, which gathers information on consumer lending. While rates have gone up during the past few days, homeowners are still refinancing old mortgages at the fastest pace since February 1996, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. “I can’t even leave my office right now,” said Greg Huber, president of Apollo Mortgage in Portland, Ore. “I’ve just been answering refinance questions since rates have come down.” The Olivers took out their home loan five years ago at a rate of about 11 percent. Since then, the value of their property rose and their credit standing improved. Once interest rates dropped, they were able to slash the rate on their $65,000 loan to 7c percent and shorten the life of the mortgage. The extra $25 they will spend each month is a small price for having the home paid off early, John said. Many homeowners decided to refinance after the 30-year mortgage rate dipped below 7.5 percent in early July. “Anytime you get lending rates below 7.5 percent, it really starts stoking the fire for refinancing,” said Steve Admire, president of Tulsa-based Advantage One Mortgage, which brokered the Oliver loan. The company fielded about twice as many customer calls on refinancing in July as in June, he said. “It’s on everybody’s mind now.” Refinancing may be a money-saving proposition for more than one- third, or about $1.2 trillion, of the nation’s outstanding loans, said Dale Westhoff, a mortgage prepayment analyst at Bear, Stearns. If rates drop one-third of a point more, about 40 percent of loans outstanding will be expensive compared with getting a new loan, he said. Debtors needn’t have such high-interest rate loans to make refinancing worthwhile. Reducing the rate on a mortgage by d of a point makes refinancing profitable as long as the homeowner isn’t also paying brokers’ fees or other charges, said Dean Caso, president of Newton, Massachusetts-based Homevest Mortgage. Homeowners paying such charges often must wait until rates drop 3/4 to a full point before refinancing makes sense. The smaller the loan size and the shorter the remaining life of the loan, the more rates must fall to make refinancing worthwhile. Analysts say refinancing is likely to increase in the next two months even if rates keep rising. That’s because many homeowners don’t want to miss out on relatively low rates. “If it makes sense to refinance right now and you’re saving money, don’t bottom-fish for lower rates,” Caso said. “Any time you bottom- fish, you’ll usually lose.” Besides saving money for borrowers, a pickup in refinancing could boost the overall economy as homeowners wind up with extra cash to spend.