A bi-weekly schedule beats a monthly one in terms of shortening the term of a home mortgage. Weekly payments, however, make little difference. Typical borrowers make their mortgage payments monthly. Some, however, make bi-weekly payments to reduce the term of their loans.
There is an alternative to monthly payments — making half your monthly payment every two weeks. When you make biweekly payments, you could save more money on interest and pay your mortgage down faster than you would by making payments once a month.
Benefits of Weekly Payments
Weekly debt payments reduce your debt faster than monthly payments if you make a payment every week of the year, which equates to 52 payments. If you take the monthly payment and divide it by four, it takes 48 weekly payments to cover the payments for a year.
Simple interest mortgages are often promoted with bi-weekly mortgage payment plans to reduce the interest paid. Making a regular monthly payment one week early on a simple interest mortgage will save on interest and pay the mortgage down faster.
If you pay your mortgage repayments weekly or fortnightly, you are paying down the principal amount faster, and thus reducing the interest that will accumulate. Interest is calculated on the principal balance, so with less principal owing, there's less interest payable.
Interest on mortgages tends to accrue daily, so repaying weekly will save you more interest than repaying fortnightly, but not much. Both generally tend to be better than paying monthly. Synchronising your mortgage repayment frequency with how often you get paid is a great way to help you to budget.
The most common way of paying a mortgage is with monthly payments typically on the 1st of every month. This is easy to remember if you are used to paying rent. Most lending institutions will let you make payments on a different date if that is more convenient for you for example the 15th day of every month.
Well, mortgage payments are generally due on the first of the month, every month, until the loan reaches maturity, or until you sell the property. So it doesn't actually matter when your mortgage funds – if you close on the 5th of the month or the 15th, the pesky mortgage is still due on the first.
Biweekly payments accelerate your mortgage payoff by paying 1/2 of your normal monthly payment every two weeks. By the end of each year, you will have paid the equivalent of 13 monthly payments instead of 12. This simple technique can shave years off your mortgage and save you thousands of dollars in interest.
Biweekly payments accelerate your mortgage payoff by paying 1/2 of your normal monthly payment every two weeks. By the end of each year, you will have paid the equivalent of 13 monthly payments instead of 12. This simple technique can shave years off your mortgage and save you thousands of dollars in interest.
"Your loan balance accrues interest every day and reducing that principal balance every 14 days (26 half payments per year) saves more in interest charges than one full additional payment every 12 months, even though the total amount in payments every year remains the same."
Okay, you probably already know that every dollar you add to your mortgage payment puts a bigger dent in your principal balance. And that means if you add just one extra payment per year, you'll knock years off the term of your mortgage—not to mention interest savings!
In this scenario, an extra principal payment of $100 per month can shorten your mortgage term by nearly 5 years, saving over $25,000 in interest payments. If you're able to make $200 in extra principal payments each month, you could shorten your mortgage term by eight years and save over $43,000 in interest.
Paying off your mortgage early is a good way to free up monthly cashflow and pay less in interest. But you'll lose your mortgage interest tax deduction, and you'd probably earn more by investing instead. Before making your decision, consider how you would use the extra money each month.
When you pay extra on your principal balance, you reduce the amount of your loan and save money on interest. Keep in mind that you may pay for other costs in your monthly payment, such as homeowners' insurance, property taxes, and private mortgage insurance (PMI).
Even if you pay your mortgage loan's bill several days early, the lender will still allocate your payment to the loan's agreed-upon principal and interest amounts due each month.
In most cases, payments made during the grace period will not affect your credit. Late payments—which can negatively impact your credit— can only be reported to credit bureaus once they are 30 or more days past due.
Your closing costs will be lower
That's because mortgage interest accrues from the date of closing through the last day of the month. So, with an end-of-month closing, there'll only be a small window for interest to accrue, and less for you to pay.
An accelerated weekly mortgage payment is when your monthly mortgage payment is divided by four and the amount is withdrawn from your bank account every week. With an accelerated weekly mortgage payment, you still make 52 payments per year but the payment amount is slightly more than a regular weekly mortgage payment.
How the homeowner makes their mortgage payments can save a lot of money over the life of the loan. Tens of thousands of dollars can be saved by making bi-weekly mortgage payments and enables the homeowner to pay off the mortgage almost eight years early with a savings of 23% of 30% of total interest costs.
Even if lenders credit the payment when it's received, the weekly payment schedule doesn't offer significant savings compared with a bi-weekly schedule. For example, take a 30-year, fixed-rate $500,000 mortgage. At an interest rate of 4.18%, the monthly payment would be $2,439.26.