Save on your Mortgage Loan
There's a trick to significantly reduce the length of your mortgage and save thousands over the course of your loan: Make additional payments that apply toward the principal. Borrowers make this happen in several different ways. Paying 1 additional payment one time every year is perhaps the easiest to arrange. If you can't afford to pay an additional whole payment all at once, you can divide that payment by 12 and write a check for that additional amount monthly. Finally, you can pay a half payment every other week. These options differ a little in lowering the final payback amount and shortening payback length, but each will significantly reduce the length of your mortgage and lower the total interest paid over the life of the loan.
Additional One-time payment
Some folks just can't make any extra payments. But it's important to note that most mortgages allow additional principal payments at any time. You can take advantage of this rule to pay down your mortgage principal when you come into extra money. If, for example, you were to receive a surprise windfall just a few years into your mortgage, you could apply this windfall toward your mortgage loan principal, which would result in enormous savings and a shorter loan period. Unless the mortgage loan is quite large, even a few thousand dollars applied early in the loan period can yield huge benefits over the duration of the loan.