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Choose the Amount of Years to Pay Off Your Mortgage Loan
If you've already bought a home and have a 30 year mortgage it can be very expensive to refinance the loan to a shorter term. However, doing that will save you thousands of dollars so you want to add extra principal payments instead.
People seem to have their own sayings about how many years you'll save on your mortgage by adding extra payments but it's easy to figure out the exact amount with a mortgage calculator. Using my calculator on my home page you can plug in the amount of the original mortgage loan and the interest rate you received. It should tell you the amount of your monthly mortgage payment and that it will take the full 30 years to pay it off.
Now add $100 to the "Additional Monthly Payments" and it will show you how much interest you'll save if you continue to make that extra payment and how many years it will take to pay off the loan. Play with the amount of extra principal until you get to the amount of years you'd like to pay the loan off in.
If you plug 0 into the additional principal it will show you the amount of interest you'll end up paying over the 30 year mortgage. Then when you change it to $100 it will give you the new amount of interest paid so you can figure out the difference and know exactly what you're paying down on your mortgage.
It's different for every mortgage depending on the amount of the loan, years being paid and the interest rate. So when someone says "add one mortgage payment per year and save 7 years off your mortgage" you can tell them that it may not be that accurate and that they should use a mortgage calculator to figure out exactly what they'd save.
Knowledge and the use of a mortgage calculator will save you thousands of dollars. | 
