Your information is very informative as you included all queries and their solution in your post. Mortgage refinancing is a topic that is still very confusing for several people. I like some topic in your reply like Mortgage Goals, Amortization, and Interest Rate.

The best thing going right now to accelerate the downpayment of your mortgage is to understand the numbers behind your mortgage.

People need to educate themselves about the following:

Mortgage Goals: What are your goals with your mortgage? When do you want to pay it off? What kind of flexibility do you want in your payments?

Amortization: Think about cutting it to a 25 year amortization. Pay the mortgage off faster, pay less interest to the bank and own your home faster.

Interest Rate: If you are in a mortgage above 5% and you have 2 to 3 years to go in your mortgage term, do the math and figure out if it makes sense to break your mortgage and go into a different term. Call your banker to setup an appointment to go over your mortgage as it sits right now and what the benefit would be to locking into a newer 5 year rate or a variable rate. Then go and see a mortgage broker about different options. Your bank will want to sell you their product and there are many other offerings. Today you should be able to get 3.99% on a 5 year rate.

In essence it comes down to this, do the math. And then get someone else to do the math. And then do the math yourself again. There are so many tools on the internet and available resources professionals that can help you and people need to arm themselves with this knowledge.

I've seen it many times where people come into our office, they have a great rate but they don't want to open their mortgage up because of the penalties they will have to pay. Listen up, you will be paying that interest to the bank over the course of the term anyway.

What about the unsecured line of credit at 12% where people have $10K sitting there...what about the VISA with another $14K on it at 19%....what about the Home depot card at 28% with only $5K on it.....and then a car loan you got at 9% and only have 42 more monthly payments to go.....

Perhaps a consolidation is in order.
I'm not saying it works for everybody but sit down, do the math and then do the math again.

Victor

The main thing to remember with paying down your mortgage is..
most people can accelerate their payments if they have a little extra cash.

the problem is.. mortgages take years to pay down. after a few months of diligent over payments, people tell themselves... "oh.. we've paid in well over the last few months... let's treat ourself with something nice as a reward"

The newness and excitement of paying down your mortgage quickly can wear off. My advice is... just stick to the program.. Keep paying down your mortgage even though it's not fun or exciting.

you'll feel much better after the mortgage is paid off and you never have to worry about it again.

I haven't worried about my mortgage for the last 10 years. That's a nice feeling.. and yes.. I did pay it down in advance.

a

I am familiar with this plan, had a guy in my office trying to sell it to me as an affiliate program on unsecured debt. I didn’t like the concept.

Just Google “debt roll up strategy”, that’s all it really is; you can probably find the spreadsheet out there somewhere.

Hey S.M.M,

I looked into this program last year (Have a buddy that was peddling it) and I decided against the program since it has the $3500 price tag. All this program really is, is spreadsheets afterall. You do all the work, none of it is automatic. Therefore, I decided that the $3500 would do better against my mortgage.

Discussed here:

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You mentioned Free programs......any links to them?

Thanks,

DBG

a

I have been looking at the Money Merge system in order to pay down one's mortgage in 1/3 to 1/2 of the time. Has anyone out there used this computer system and found it truly more successful than just trying to figure this out on your own? It costs $3500 to buy the software. Thanks for any information you have on this.