Get Financially Fit!

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I was talking with a friend the other day and he asked me if it was better to pay off the mortgage first or focus on retirement savings.  My personal preference is to save 15% toward retirement savings and then use incremental money to pay off your house.  My post titled, Create a financial plan, outlines my 10 recommended steps to retirement security.

If you have incremental money to put toward your mortgage here is a strategy to pay off your mortgage in half the remaining time of your loan.  In brief you create an amortization table and double up on principal payments.  The accelerated payment method that I’m describing worked for fixed loan mortgages. 

Step one of the process is to create an amortization schedule for your mortgage.  An amortization schedule details your principal and interest payment for each month.  I found a good amortization calculator at Bankrate.  Simply enter the loan amount, number of payment periods (in years or months, the interest rate, and the starting date of the loan.  The calculator will calculate both your monthly payment and the principal and interest payment for each month.  The Bankrate calculator also has the option of adding an incremental payment each month, adding an incremental payment each year, or adding a one time payment. 

To cut your mortgage payment time in half, simply send an incremental payment each month that matches the principal payment corresponding to the month that you are in.  Here’s an example:

Loan amount:  $200,000
Loan term:   30 years
Interest rate:  6%

The calculator determines that your monthly payment is $1199.10

In the first month, $199.10 goes to principal and $1000 goes toward interest.  In month 1 then send in an incremental $199.10 and your loan duration will shrink by an incremental 1 month. 

In the second month $200.10 goes to principal and $999.0 goes toward interest.  In month 2 send in an incremental $200.10 and your loan during will shrink by an incremental month (your loan will now end two months earlier). 

In an alternative scenario if you are 10 years into this same loan and want to begin this process, the incremental payment would be $341.20.  Simply print out the amortization schedule and begin paying the principal payment amount. 

The great thing about this recommended process is that you can send in incremental money and quickly determine the decrease in the loan term.  One way to apply this process is to print out the amortization schedule for your mortgage.  Whenever you send in an incremental principal payment for the current month then you cross off the last month on the schedule.  This has the benefit that you can visually see the the progress that you are making toward eliminating your mortgage.

One of my  motivations for writing this post is to warn you off of expensive software packages ($1000 to $5000) that supposedly help you pay off your mortgage faster.  You are much better off putting that money toward your mortgage payment. 

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