Who wouldn’t want to pay off their mortgage sooner, reducing the total amount of interest due? This is something that every home owner with a mortgage can do by accelerating their mortgage payments. There are several ways this can be done, and it’s best to research the options that work best for your current financial situation. From contacting your lender to set up bi-weekly payments, to saving yourself and making an extra year end payment, let’s take a look at accelerated mortgage payment options.
Bi-Weekly Payments
By making a mortgage payment every two weeks, you end up making the equivalent of thirteen monthly payments by years end. Using this method, you pay half of your usual monthly mortgage payment every other week. Each dollar that you pay, goes toward the principal balance on your mortgage.
Most lenders have a payment plan option that allows you to set up bi-weekly payments. You can’t just decide to split your payment and send it in every other week. Arrangements must be made with the lender. The drawback to this is that sometimes lenders charge a hefty up front or monthly fee to set the payments up this way.
1/12th Payments
For a do-it-yourself accelerated payment option, you can try the 1/12th method. With this form of extra payment, you basically take whatever your usual monthly mortgage payment is and divide by 12. The amount you get is what you can pay extra on your mortgage payment each month. For example, if your usual mortgage payment is $1200 per month, you would divide that by 12, getting $100. Take the additional $100 and add it to your monthly payment, thus you would pay $1300 every month.
The advantage to doing it this way is that there is no fee to set up this type of payment plan. However, you just may not have the additional money to put toward your mortgage payment each month.
Advantages/Disadvantages
It may seem like there are no disadvantages to accelerating your mortgage payments. However, the fees that lenders charge to do this type of payment plan might be too much for some home owners to afford. The money paid is a fee, it doesn’t go toward reducing the mortgage at all. Another disadvantage is that mortgage payments are expensive enough for homeowners. Having additional money available to make a payment every other week verses just one time a month could be a struggle. Or adding the additional amount to the regular payment amount may just be too much for some homeowners.
Of course there are clear advantages to making accelerated mortgage payments. First, ever dollar paid reduces the principal of the mortgage. This reduces the total interest due over the course of the loan. Accelerating the mortgage payments, also reduces the length of time you are paying on your mortgage. Essentially freeing up some money in later years. So for a shorter loan period and reduced interest fees, the accelerated mortgage payment is definitely something worth looking into.