Cut 9 Years off of Your Mortgage

Due to the recession, we’re unsure how long we’re staying in our current home.  We continue to make improvements to our home so it’s ready to be sold when the market starts looking up.  While talking about this with my mom, she informed me of a way to cut years off of our mortgage.  She’s currently taking advantage of this “deal”.

Instead of paying your mortgage once per month, pay 1/2 the amount every two weeks!  Simple as that.  This cuts your mortgage down because instead of making only 12 payments, you’re making 26 half-payments (52/payments every 2 weeks) equal to 13 full payments.  So you end up making one extra full payment spread over the course of the year.  This will not work if you make payments twice per month, which would be the same as 24 half-payments or 12 regular payments.

One trick to this is that you need to be aware of is that your bank will charge you a fee to set up automatically deducted bi-weekly payments.  You can avoid this fee by dropping the payment off in the mail or at the bank.

Now I know this doesn’t sound like it will work.  Another trick is that when you make those two extra half-payments, tell the bank to apply those amounts to the principal, not the interest.  This will really take a chunk out of your mortgage!