ANNOUNCER:
Your home… where you live… your sanctuary. It's also your biggest investment. It's always there for you when you need it, but what about your mortgage? What if you could pay your mortgage off earlier and faster? You could save tens of thousands in interest and free up your money for things you really need, like your child's education or your retirement.
There are lots of smart ways to approach it. You could take years off your mortgage by making small changes, like changing your payment frequency from monthly to bi-weekly, matching a payment or even increasing your payment by say $50 a year for the next 5 years. It’s amazing what even small changes to the way you pay your mortgage can have on the amount of interest you can save.
Now, let's take the average Canadian mortgage of $200,000 amortized over 30 years. By switching to a weekly or bi-weekly payment the average Canadian would pay off their mortgage more than 4 years sooner and save over $23,000 in interest. Sounds pretty good, right? You can also make extra lump sum payments. The extra payments go directly to the principle rather than being split between principle and interest. Let's say you paid an extra $500 every year and you also made small increases to your bi-weekly payments of say, 2%. By making both of these small changes, you would shave off a combined total of over 11 years from your 30 year mortgage and save a total of almost $53,000 in interest. It's almost enough to make you start liking math… sort of.
The cornerstone of your borrowing plan should be the Scotia Total Equity Plan, or STEP, which gives you the flexibility you need for borrowing, now and in the future. It not only lets you split your mortgage into fixed and variable rate solutions or between short and long term solutions, you can also add lines of credit, credit cards and other borrowing products as your needs change. With STEP you may never have to apply for credit again!
Why not start by talking to a Scotia advisor today about some more ideas on paying off your mortgage faster and saving with a plan that works best for you?