Bi-Weekly Mortgage Payments

What are they? Basically when you sign up for Bi-Weekly Mortgage Payments instead of making one single monthly mortgage payment each month, or 12 mortgage payments a year, you make a 1/2 mortgage payment every two weeks. And because there are 52 weeks in a year, that equates to 26 half mortgage payments a year, or 13 total monthly mortgage payments.

Since you are paying two half payments a month your principal decreases faster and as a result you are charged less interest. The result? years can be shaved off of the life of your loan. You will save thousands of dollars over the life of the mortgage. For example, by paying biweekly on a $100,000, 30-year fixed rate mortgage at a 6.5 percent interest rate, you could save more than $30,000 and pay off your loan in 22 years.

How do you go about setting it up? Call your mortgage company and ask them if they offer biweekly payments and if there is a charge for it. Also make sure that they are applying the payment twice a month and not just once.

Another option is to pay an extra amount towards your principal each month or once a year. Can you pay $25, $50, or $100 a month extra towards the principal of the loan? You will build a substantial amount of equity in your home in no time.

Example, if you have a 30 year mortgage at 5% interest rate and you pay $50 extra towards principal a month you will save $21,299 in interest! Say that you are only planning on living in your home for 5 years, that's all the more reason to do it and build your equity as the beginning of the loan is when the least amount of principal is being paid and the majority of your payment is interest.

If you have any additional questions feel free to contact me.