Making extra payments can dramatically shorten the time until your mortgage will be paid in full, says Ronit Rogoszinski, a wealth adviser at Arch Financial Group in Garden City, N.Y.
Consider: The monthly principal and interest on a $150,000 mortgage with a 30-year term and an interest rate of 5.5 percent totals $852. Paying an extra one-twelfth of that amount, or $71, each month would increase the payment to $923, but also shorten the term by five years and one month and cut the interest expense by $30,789.
"The more payments you make in a shorter period of time, the less you end up paying in the long term, and the faster you'll get rid of your mortgage," Rogoszinski says. "If you can put aside a couple of dollars every week and then end up plugging it into your mortgage, that's awesome."