From Anna Matsunaga, Realtor, Team Momentum, Keller Williams Tacoma
253 212 1252

How to pay off your home early

So, you are a home owner and you are enjoying the tax write offs, the gaining equity and the freedom to do what you like with your house.  What's next?  Are there ways you can make owning a home even more valuable?





Firstly, if you are looking at long term stability and looking to the day where you no longer have a payment on your home it is important to do your best not only to maintain a good credit score.  ( in case lower rates make it make sense to refinance for a lower rate) Want to at some point be mortgage free?  Think twice about taking out home equity loans.  There are times where doing so is a sound investment strategy, but if it is just to buy depreciating items ( car, etc) or to take a vacation or to pay off debt only to wrack up more....stop and think first. 




Better yet, instead of just not adding to your debt, what if you could save tens of thousands of dollars in interest and be able to stop paying a mortgage completely years if not even a decade or more earlier?  How can you do this?  Well.....it's as simple as making extra payments to principle.  The earlier in your loan the better.  Not sure how it will impact your interest paid out or how long you pay on it?






Here is a link to a mortgage calculator to help you figure out what extra payments would do for you.
Use it to figure out how much extra to principle you'd need to add to meet your goals for when your home will be paid off.



What will extra mortgage payments do for me? 

If you budget won't allow you to pay the same extra every month or sometimes it won't allow any extra, don't despair, any extra does make a difference  and the sooner you start, the bigger difference it makes. Even if you only do extra when you have extra that will help too.  Maybe make a goal of always paying some extra.  During some very hard times economically when our family struggled to even pay our mortgage putting an extra $5 a month made me feel better.  Did it make a big difference?  No, but it kept me in the habit of always paying more than needed. 

How soon do you want your mortgage paid off?  Make a plan and stick with it.

Thinking you want the equity you have to help you get into a different home?  Call me for help planning your  transition and I can also help you find a lender with pay off options other than just a standard 30 year mortgage.

Anna Matsunaga,
Team Momentum, Keller Williams Tacoma
253 212 1252