4 Tips for Paying Off Your Biweekly Mortgage Even Faster

If you are interested in the power of a biweekly mortgage for paying off your mortgage and getting out of debt more quickly then some of these other mortgage suggestions that speed your way to a final payoff might interest you as well.

1. Have a larger down payment: The larger your down payment, obviously the less you have to repay in a loan. Most importantly, when it comes to saving money and paying off your debt more quickly, it is that much less that the lender will be able to charge you in interest. The last $1,000 of a 30 year loan at 6% interest is charged almost $1,000 in interest over the life of the loan this is money that you could save by simply working diligently and hard to come up with that $1,000 up front as a down payment. It could save you several months worth of house payment.
2. Get a shorter-term loan: you can have a biweekly mortgage that pays off a loan in 30 years, 45 years, or even 70 years in some cases, but generally a biweekly mortgage is designed to get you out of debt mortgage quickly, and one of the best ways to manage that is to set up for a shorter-term mortgage with your lender right from the beginning. Many people mistakenly believes that this automatically doubles your mortgage payment (from $1,200 per month to $2,400 per month for example), but this is not true at all. The shorter term loans means that the lender has less time to charge you interest, so your loan is less expensive and you do not need to actually double your payment to achieve a shorter loan. In the long run you are paying less money in interest.

3. Budget and pay a little extra: "Every penny counts" is an old and common axiom. The further we move away from the days when this phrase was coined, the less relevant it seems, since you can hardly buy anything for a penny today. When it comes to a penny picking up interest for 30 years, however, more truth is added to the statement. What this means for you if you are trying to pay off your home that much more quickly is that pennies added to your monthly payment will shave off time that you have to pay on the loan. It may not seem like much if you sent in an extra $10 per month, but $120 per year over just a 15 year loan is $1,800 less than you would otherwise have had to pay interest on - that could be the equivalent of 3-4 monthly payments.
4. Pay cash for closing: A common mistake many first-time homeowners make is jumping on the option to save their cash by rolling their closing costs for the sale of the home into the loan and thinking they got away with something when their mortgage payment goes up only a few of dollars per month as a result. This is a costly move that easily turns a few hundred dollars in closing costs into more than a thousand dollars to your bank or lending institution over time. When you are considering a home, having cash for the down payment is very important, but not at the expense of having no money to handle your closing costs up front.