While buying a home is a memorable first experience full of pride and excitement,getting to pay for that home over the next 20-30years is something ..ahem… shall we say less memorable. But you can become mortgage free. Quickly paying off your mortgage is a real thing. This article will show you how to pay off your mortgage in 5 years and the tricks we used to get there (full disclosure we did it in 6)
Let’s face it buying a home is a rite of pasasge.
It’s a given that for most people a house is the BIGGEST PURCHASEthey will ever make.Which also means that it will be the LONGEST PAYMENTS they will ever have to make.
Let’s just come out and say it …”Home ownership rocks, but home payments suck.” Luckily there are things you can do to pay off your mortgage faster than the typical 30 years your bank would like you to believe.
The Scary Truth
The sad and scary truth is that a mortgage is the biggest reason why people are stuck in jobs they hate and can’t leave. Getting rid of that burden is something worth speeding up.
It’s about building Financial Freedom
We believe that getting rid of thatdreaded monthlypayment is a goal worth achieving. Outright owning a home is a huge step towards your financial freedom.
The truth is you are going to have to live somewhere, a paid off house is great place to stay.
Below are 5 tips we are using to pay off your mortgage quickly. By using all of these methods could pay off your mortgage in as little as 5 years instead of 25.
Related post:How We Paid off Our Mortgage In 6 Years
5Things YouCanDo To Pay Off Your Mortgage in 5 Years
1. Switch to Bi-weekly Payments
This is the same as adding an extra months worth of payments every year. Instead of bi-monthly (24 payments a year), your mortgage is paid every two weeks, over the course of a year this adds up to 2 extra payments (or 26 payments per year).
There you go, one extra month of payments.
2. Add One-time Payments to Your Mortgage
This is another option most mortgages have. You can use any extra money as a one-time lump sum payment. Anytime you get a bonus or have extra cash it goes onto the principle.
Most banks allow for an anniversary payment of up to 15% of the original mortgage amount.
Call your bank and see what are the terms of your mortgage.
Related Post: Is a Lump Sum Payment Right For You?
3. Match-a-Payment
Some mortgages over what is called a match-a-payment. Where you can pay double up on any mortgage payment you have.
This is great as the whole amount goes against your principle and not againsttheinterest. Doing a few of these every year can speed up your mortgage pay off.
4. Shorter AmortizationPeriod
Huh? What’s with the fancy talk?
Amortization is a $20 dollar word that means the length of time you are taking to pay something off.
Instead of making a payment over 25 years, you could shorten it to 20 years or less.
This has the added benefit of saving thousands in interest and being mortgage free years earlier than expected.
5. Make Becoming Mortgage Free a Priority
This is something everyone can do and it costs nothing! Having a debt free mentality will change how you look at everything. Yes you will have to sacrifice, and yes, sometimes it will flat out suck at times.
But being mortgage debt free is worth it.
Most things that are worth having take a little sacrifice. In my opinion that is what makes them worth having.
Something the Banks Don’t Want You to See
When you start to look at how to pay off your mortgage in 5 years, the one key is putting more money down on your mortgage sooner rather than later. An easy way to do this is to change to a smaller amortization period.
If I had stayed with a 30 year amortization, I would have paid nearly the same amount of interest as my principle.
That’s ridiculous.
A Cup of Coffee a Day Can Save You Thousands
By changing my mortgage from a 30 year to a 25, I saved $61,000 over 25 years.
All for an extra $70 every two weeks. Which is about the cost of a fancy coffee every day ($5 a day extra).
If you were to cut your amortization (length of the mortgage) to the following numbers, this is what savings you would have on a $320,000 mortgage with 5% interest rate.
| Amortization | Increase in bi-weekly payment | Interest Savings |
30 | $0.00 | |
25 | $69.90 | $60,706.00 |
20 | $179.77 | $117,659.00 |
15 | $370.71 | $171,405.00 |
10 | $768.55 | $222,160.00 |
If an extra $5 a day saves over $60,000, $10 a day could save you over $100,0000.
What’s crazy is that it’s small changes that we can easily make.
Consider Refinancing Your Mortgage
We were originally in a 10 year mortgage because we were worried about rising interest rates.
By switching to a shorter term mortgage, it signalled to me that we were serious about paying off our mortage. We also saved a lot of money on interest by switching.
We cut down our interest rate and that helped with the faster mortgage pay down. That’s because every payment has less interest on it.
If you are worried about rising interest rates refinancing might be the right thing to do.
Sometimes knowing what you are going to be paying for years to come can be a godsend to your budget. I never regretted locking into a longer term mortgage and refinancing at that point made sense to us.
If I was to do it again, with rising interest rates I would lock into rates for as long as I could right now.
Check out Lending Tree for the most up to date rates(or if you’re in Canada Ratehub is a great place to get the most current rates.
5 Year Mortgage Pay off Calculator
If you are thinking you may want to embark on a paid off mortgage journey, you can play around with your numbers here. It will give you a better idea of what you want to accomplish in a certain time line.
Know Your Choices When Paying Off Your House in 5 Years
While trying to do all of these may be down right hard, it’s great to know what payment options you have with your mortgage.
The biggest lesson here is that EVERY LITTLE BIT COUNTS!
A fewyears ago, we decided to focus on becoming mortgage free. Somepeople thought we were crazy, and outright told us that we should forget about it.
Fast forward to todayand we have successfully paid off our mortgage.
Those people who thought we were crazy still have over 20 years of mortgage payments remaining.
I’ll be the first to admit, it’s definitely not for everyone, but I like the way it looks for us.
RELATED POST: 28 Things We Gave Up To Be Mortgage Free
Everyone’s situation, and mortgage, is different and you should alwaysdo what makes sense to you financially.For us, this is what made the most sense.
If you are looking for a great spreadsheet to crush your mortgageI invite you tocheck out our Mortgage Free Master Plan, it’s a one hour program that helps youcreate your own plan forpaying off your mortgage faster.
If you found this useful, please share it. Help spread the word about becoming mortgage free.
