Re: Mortgage repayment software that handles biweekly payments

From: Paul Maffia <paulmaf@eskimo.com>
Subject: Re: Mortgage repayment software that handles biweekly payments
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 15:48:08 -0800 (PST)

Next Article (by Date): RE: Dividends "Jackson, Anthony D."
Previous Article (by Date): How to calculate life insurance needs nowak@comm.mot.com (Mark Nowak)
Next in Thread: Re: Mortgage repayment software that handles biweekly payments Rich Carreiro
Articles sorted by: [Date] [Author] [Subject]

On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Mark Nowak wrote:

> I've recently been told (and it should have been obvious)
> that if you pay your mortgage off in a biweekly manner
> instead of with monthly payments, you can save yourself
> a significant amount of interest.  Since my paychecks
> do me little good in my checking account, when I buy
> a house I'd like to be able to pay back the loan in
> biweekly payments.

Its true. The only problem is that most banks and mortgage companies won't
accept bi-weekly payments.

So you have a lot of scammers out there who will "arrange this for a fee".
The fee is usually about $350 to set up the program and then a fee per
payment.

Then what they do is have you send them the checks. The once a month they
make the mortgage payment on your behalf. And either pay whatever extra
they have on hand with instructions to your mortgage holder to apply the
excess to your principal or they accumulate the extra until they have one
mortgage payment's worth and make one extra mortgage payment each year,
usually keeping the small amount of interest your money earns. (multiplied
by all the suckers who sign up, that can be a lot of interest.)

You can do the same yourself by sending your mortgage company one extra
payment per year.

> Anyone doing this?  Anyone care to comment?
> 
> Anyone know of any software (preferably free) that
> can calculate such savings?

If you have a spreadsheet program, you probably already have it.

Look in your spreadsheets samples and you will find an amortization one. I
know EXCEL has it. 

                                    Paul M.  

- -

Go to Jeff Salisbury LWGate Home Page.