3422: Mortgage Prepayment Made Easy: Own Your Home in Half the Time by JD Roth of Get Rich Slowly

When you're ready to start your business, Northwest's registered agent gives you access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms, everything you need to launch and protect your business in one place. Northwest's registered agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly thirty years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in The US, with over 1,500 corporate guides, real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. Plus, with Northwest, privacy is automatic. They never sell your data and handle all services in house because privacy by default is their pledge to customers. Don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand, and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and ten minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/ofdfree and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/ofdfree. This is Optimal Finance Daily, mortgage prepayment made easy. Own your home in half the time by JD Roth of getrichslowly.org. Because I recently eliminated all of my non mortgage debt, I had a significant positive cash flow. The thousand dollars per month I was putting towards debt can now be used for investing. I'm making maximum contributions to my Roth IRA, of course, but that still leaves several $100 each month available for other purposes. This has forced me to evaluate my financial goals. Mortgage prepayment options. For the past year, Chris and I have discussed making accelerated payments on our mortgage. I've written about this choice several times at Get Rich Slowly, and it seems clear that mathematically, it makes more sense to invest the money. However, it's also clear that eliminating a mortgage offers a tremendous psychological boost. I've never heard anyone say they regret owning their home outright. I've researched a variety of mortgage acceleration schemes. Refinancing from a thirty year to a fifteen year mortgage is appealing, but the interest rate drop from 6.25% isn't enough to make this worthwhile. I could sign up for my bank's biweekly payment program, but I don't like the enrollment fee, and I don't like the increase in paperwork. Or we could make an extra payment every year or pay an extra $100 per month, but I feel like we could do more. Ultimately, we decided to use the method described by Charles Givens in his 1988 bestseller Wealth Without Risk. Quote, you can pay off your thirty year mortgage in half the time without refinancing by making extra principal payments. On the first of the month when you write your regular mortgage check, write a second check for the principal only portion of the next month's payment, end quote. Wealth without risk. For most homeowners, the principal portion of a mortgage payment is quite small. For example, our February mortgage bill was $1,681.79. Of this, $1,119.16 was designated for interest, $295.19 for escrow, taxes, and insurance, but only $267.44 for principal. Using Givens plan, if I include an …