Making consistent additional payments on your loan principal will yield big savings. Borrowers make this happen in a few ways. Making 1 extra full payment once every year is perhaps the easiest to arrange. However, some people can't pull off such a large extra payment, so splitting one extra payment into 12 extra monthly payments is a great option too. Another option is to pay half of your payment every other week. The effect here is that you will make one extra monthly payment each year. Each of these options produces different results, but each will significantly reduce the length of your mortgage and lower the total interest paid over the duration of the loan.
It may not be possible for you to pay extra every month or even every year. Keep in mind that almost all mortgages will permit you to make additional payments to your principal at any point during repayment. You can benefit from this rule to pay extra on your principal when you come into extra money. If, for example, you were to receive a large gift or tax refund just a few years into your mortgage, you could pay a portion of this money toward your loan principal, resulting in huge savings and a shorter payback period. Unless the mortgage loan is quite large, even modest amounts applied early can produce huge benefits over the duration of the loan.
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