Here's a simple trick to significantly reduce the length of your mortgage and save thousands over the course of your loan: Make additional payments which apply to the loan principal. People employ various techniques to meet this goal. Making 1 additional payment one time per year may be the simplest to keep track of. If you can't pay an extra whole payment in one month, you can divide that payment by 12 and pay that additional amount monthly. Another option is to pay half of your payment every two weeks. The result is you make one additional monthly payment every year. These options differ slightly in lowering the total interest paid and reducing payback length, but they will all significantly shorten the duration of your mortgage and lower the total interest you will pay over the life of the loan.
Some people can't manage extra payments. Keep in mind that almost all mortgages will allow you to pay extra on your principal at any point during repayment. You can benefit from this provision to pay down your principal any time you get some extra money. If, for example, you receive a surprise windfall just a few years into your mortgage, paying several thousand dollars into your mortgage principal will reduce the period of your loan and save a huge amount on interest paid over the life of the loan. For most loans, even this relatively small amount, paid early in the mortgage, could offer big savings in interest and in the duration of the loan.
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