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A Long Term Financial Plan

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If you’re a homeowner, and you have a long-term financial plan, you should include a strategy to pay your mortgage off early. If you can, you’ll have more money each month to payoff non-housing debt, or to build up long-term savings to fund your children’s college education, or to prepare for your retirement. And speaking of retirement, you’ll want your mortgage gone by the time that day arrives, that way you won’t need nearly as much income and your retirement portfolio will last much longer.

Here are four ways to payoff your mortgage early that you’ll hardly even notice. Use one or a combination of two or more, and you’ll be mortgage-free well ahead of schedule.

Refinance to a mortgage with a shorter term

With mortgage rates currently in the 4.something range, this can be the simplest way to retire your mortgage early. The idea is to refinance your loan, but reduce the term by at least five or 10 years. By doing so, you can convert a 30 year mortgage to a 25 year loan, or even a 20 year term.

As simple as this method is, there are some caveats to be aware of should you decide to go this route:

You don’t want to refinance if it will result in an increase in your interest rate of something on the order of one percent or more. There 's a point where a higher rate will offset the benefits of a shorter term.
You don’t want to add closing costs to the new loan balance – doing so will only increase your monthly payments, and make paying off the loan more difficult.
The term

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