If you own your own home or are planning to buy a home, you should become very familiar with a great little tool called a mortgage calculator. A mortgage calculator is an online tool that tells you a lot of information about your mortgage. You can use a calculator to figure interest payments, house payments and much more. If you use the amortization option on a mortgage calculator, you can view each and every mortgage payment due. You can even see what affect making extra payments will have on your mortgage.
When you first start paying on your mortgage, the majority of your payment will be going toward interest. It is not until the end of your loan that you actually start really paying down the principle balance. A mortgage calculator will help you see exactly where your money will be going before you take out a loan. If you already have a mortgage, a mortgage calculator will show you how your payments will be distributed throughout repayment.
You can also use a mortgage calculator to see how making extra payments toward principle will affect your loan. For example: If you have an 8%, 30 year mortgage for $100,000, you will pay back $264,153. A huge chunk of that...