Bi-Weekly Mortage Payments

[babymakes5]

Does anyone do this? We just started last month. There is real benefit to it. You have to go through your lender to set it up, but it is well worth it.

Benefits: Faster payoffs and overall lower interest costs
Example: Pay off a $200,000 30 year fixed loan at 7% in approximately 24 years (75 months sooner than a standard payment plan), with a total of $68,925 in interest savings

[Michelle68]

I think bi-weekly mortgage payments are a good idea, but I think most lenders charge a fee to set up a plan and actually, this something people can do themselves without setting up the payments through the mortgage company. Just make an extra payment every other week and mark it, "For principal only". You get the same money-saving results without the extra fee.


--Michelle

[Spark]

It would cost us money so after our loans are paid off, I'm opening an ING checking account and having right amount of money direct deposited. DH is paid biweekly anyway so it wouldn't be any big deal to lose that money every paycheck. Then I'll set up free bill pay every month and make extra payments when the money is in the account. Then the money collects interest for me until the payment each month.

[babymakes5]

I don't know if it was a coincidence because we bank at the same place we have our home loan, but we didn't occur any extra fees or charges. Also, we were paying ours on our own, bi-weekly, and we started occuring late fees for not paying our mortage on time. Come to find out, our bank doesn't process mulitiple payments the same way, but thankfully they corrected all the late fees and we got everything set up.

[sdrjeolsen]

I just set up my accounts to do this myself. Our 1st payemt is due Aug 1st. I called and asked them for specifics on the bi-weekly mortgage. They told me that although they do not charge a fee, they hold the 1st half of the payement for 14 days till the 2nd 1/2 payment comes in then they combine them and pay the full amount. Smart for them to get to hold half the money for 14 days and earn interest on it. I decided to hold it myself in an interest bearing account and then pay it together when the 2nd 1/2 payment is due. Same outcome, but I earn the interest instead of them.
Strange, but they said they wouldn't accept 1/2 payments every other week, it had to be the full amount or more to be processed.
But you are right, it saves so much money over the length of the loan, it's a very smart move.

[Its_Donna]

We do this and I am so glad we do.

[Jayne]

we just re-financed everything, are mortgage, equity loan and all our cc's...we went with bi-weekly payments and we should have our loan paid off in 14 years instead of 20...we were'nt charged any fees to do this...we do have to open our own escrow account for taxes and insurance, so we are going with ING

[geckoace]

we have been talking about this... fyi-wells fargo doesn't charge any fees like some of the other banks do