OH crap- "Streamline"
TL;DR- in English- as long as you can fit those discounts and fees into what you ORIGINALLY borrowed you should be golden. You cannot INCREASE the base original loan amount with a streamline.

(Been awhile, sorry)- Last I checked, typically with a streamline situation you are only allowed a certain amount of closing costs to be added into the loan. Since a streamline uses only limited information to qualify for the loan, they limit the amount of points / fees that can be rolled in VS a traditional full refi.

The VA allows you to Roll any of the following costs into your VA streamline loan:

VA funding fee, which is 0.5% of your loan amount- MANDATORY
2 discount points or 2% of your loan amount
1 origination point or 1% of your loan amount
Any itemized fees that the VA allows (credit report fee, underwriting fee, appraisal fee)

Translated: 3.5% in origination costs + Credit, underwriting and appraisal fee are allowed to be added into the new loan- AND to roll these into the loan you must be able to fit all these costs INTO the original loan amount borrowed- so if you have NOT paid down the existing loan enough to cover the new fees, you're SOL.

Case in point: if you bought 3 months ago (Borrowed $100K) and applied for a VA IRRL today, after making ONE payment, technically you wouldn't qualify since you don't have enough paid down to roll the fees in.
NOW- this means "Add it to the tab"- if you wish to pay the discount points and fees out of pocket, these rules don't apply.

Double check with the lender, but that's how it was before.

Generally you should not refinance to bring down your monthly payment rather than speed up your pay off timeline. Most people reset the clock to 30 years every time they refinance and either take out money or reduce their monthly cost.

I know for BK it is not possible, but when you see yourself with 20 years left, make every effort to push into a 15 to speed things up.

We bought a house last March (2.99 VA loan) we had to wait 240 days to refinance and did a refinance for 2.49 VA loan. Reduced our monthly payment $200 a month. My wife knows the house buying, selling and financing stuff, I was a Soldier for 31 years and lived a vagabond lifestyle and never bought a house until I retired.
I probably did not help with the original question, but just sharing my experance.

I'll take refinancing at a lower rate when rates drop enough to compensate me for the out of pocket closing costs - say within 24 months or so. (Since I'm not planning on moving anytime soon.) To me it doesn't make sense to accelerate mortgage payoff with the cheap long-term rates and instead save monthly towards 401k/Roth accounts at double or triple the mortgage rate with market returns.

^ do you think the rate is going to drop? They're ridiculously low now. Might be time to lock in now before it climbs