How to Pay Off a Mortgage in 5 Years

You can pay off your mortgage early.

If your mortgage payment is $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 or more, what a difference it would make if you no longer had to pay it because you paid off your mortgage. It may sound too good to be true, but there are ways that you can pay off your mortgage in five years or less.

Step 1

Make paying off your mortgage a top priority. Every financial decision you make should result in having more money to pay down your mortgage.

Step 2

Evaluate your expenses and find ways to lower them. Eat out less frequently and go to less expensive places when you do. If you ordinarily spend $50 eating out five times each month, cut back to $25 for three visits instead. That alone would save you $175 each month that can be added to your mortgage payments.

Step 3

Work more hours at your current job or take a second one until you have paid off your mortgage. If you could add an additional $100 to your mortgage payment each week, that would amount to $5,000 by the end of the first year. By doing that, you would pay off a $200,000 30-year mortgage in less than 17 years.

Step 4

Create a budget for yourself and your family and live only on cash, not credit. Most credit cards charge about 20 percent interest on the amount you have outstanding. If you ordinarily carry a balance on your credit cards, transfer the balance to new cards when they offer low-interest promotions to new cardholders, pay them off, then cut the cards up.

Step 5

Replace your mortgage with a new one with a term that matches the amount of additional money you have to pay each money by employing any or all of the above suggestions.


Paying a mortgage off early is not the best idea for many people. Some may have grown attached to having their taxes reduced by being able to deduct the interest you pay on their mortgage. Others use borrowed money to fund growth investments. Instead of paying off their mortgages more quickly, people are adding to their portfolios.