You may pay off your home faster by refinancing a 30-year mortgage to a 10-, 15-, or 20-year loan, but you’ll have to pay a higher monthly payment. You might also explore ways to expedite things without refinancing.
You might believe that refinancing your mortgage to a shorter-term loan is a win-win situation: you save money on interest and have your house paid off faster. However, there may be other options for achieving those objectives.
Continue reading to know if paying off your mortgage in Colorado Springs sooner makes sense for you:
Affording A Bigger Mortgage Payment
Squeezing an extra hundred dollars out of the monthly budget and limiting access to easy cash may be dangerous for certain homeowners, particularly those with young families or cash-strapped for other reasons.
While shorter-term loans have lower interest rates, they can have much greater monthly payments. Because missing payments can hurt your credit and put your home in peril, you should be sure that greater payments fit into your budget.
Even if you’re confident in your capacity to make larger monthly payments, your debt-to-income ratio needs to be low enough to convince a lender that you can. Your DTI, including home-related spending, should be no more than 36% for most loans.
A higher DTI doesn’t guarantee you’ll be denied a loan, but it does make you less likely to get the best rate. Note that when lenders calculate your DTI, they factor in all your debt. If you have a large credit card debt or a large auto payment, prepare for a higher mortgage rate.
Accomplishing Other Financial Objectives
If you have long-term debts and enough monthly money to meet your expenses, a mortgage refinance in Colorado Springs to a shorter-term loan may be a good option (with extra cash to spare). However, putting more money into your house may not be the best long-term option if your budget is tight or you aren’t contributing to other savings.
Rather than putting money into a 529 college savings plan, retirement accounts, life insurance policies, or investments, it can make more financial sense to put that money into something else.
Paying Off Short-Term Debt
Shifting to a shorter-term loan can increase your monthly payments, but it can also reduce them—along with overall interest charges—depending on how far you are in repaying your mortgage.
Cutting your loan term in half after only a few years of payments, for example, can considerably boost your monthly payment. A couple of years off a debt that has been repaid over a long period, on the other hand, will have less of an influence and may even result in a minor reduction in your monthly payment.
Paying Off Debt In Another Method
Refinancing isn’t the only strategy to get your mortgage paid off faster. You won’t modify your interest rate with these tactics, but you won’t have to pay closing charges.
Add that amount to your monthly payment by dividing your current mortgage payment by 12. Check with your mortgage lender in Colorado Springs and monitor your monthly statements to ensure the extra money is going toward principal rather than interest. If you make those extra payments regularly, you may shave years off the length of a 30-year mortgage.
Conclusion
Calculate the monthly payments on a shorter-term loan and make those installments each month instead of going through the motions of refinancing. You can easily revert to your usual payment amount if you’re short on funds for certain months without risking fines.
Total Lending Concepts is a local mortgage company. Whether you’re a first-time purchaser looking for your first home or ready to purchase that dream home you’ve had your eye on, we have a home loan to match your needs. Total Lending Concepts offers a comprehensive range of loan alternatives to meet your needs, including conventional, VA, USDA, FHA, and other possibilities. We’re excited to show you what it’s like to acquire a “home loan with a little TLC”! Contact us for a mortgage in Colorado Springs.
