paying monthly vs bi-weekly

[marty56]

Most Bi-Weekly have a fee associated with them.  My old mortgage company (National City) tried to scam me.  The truth is you can make extra payments on principle any time and you can increase your monthly payment and have the extra go to the principle as well.

Message Edited by marty56 on 12-04-2009 04:47 PM

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
  ...The only way to avoid the fees is to have an automatic withdrawal set up with the bank and that way you have no control if something comes up...

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I find the automatic withdrawal to be a perfect angst-reliever, and BoA (formerly CountryWide) also withdraws and applies an additional principal-only at the same time. No fee. Just as my rent used to be, I consider my mortgage to be sacrosanct -- it WILL be paid (as long as that's financially possible) even before any other bill gets paid monthly. What could 'come up' that would interfere with your mortgage payment?

Message Edited by oldhack62 on 12-04-2009 08:54 PM

[deviousdevelopment]

I think what he (or she) is trying to say is that being locked into a bi-weekly payment can lead to trouble if something comes up mid-month.  If you make the payment yourself but aren't "officially" on a bi-weekly schedule then should something come up you can always pay it on the 1st of the month.

[JagerBombs89]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My mortgage is with Citi and they offer The BiWeekly Advantage Plan  they charge a one time $375 fee and $1.50 fee for each draft.  You make one extra payment a year on this plan.

Since I am cheap  and dont want to pay the fees (over $1250 over the life of the loan) I opened a separate savings account.  My paychecks are electronically deposited everyone Friday and I have my bank account set up to auto transfer half of my mortgage payment into that savings account.  I dont use that savings account for anything other then saving a mortgage payment so there is no temptation to "borrow" from it.  Once a year when the extra money has accumulated in the account I will include the extra payment into my monthly payment.

All of the transfers are electronic so it is basically the same as their plan without the fees.  I may earn a couple bucks in interest. 

I am about to make my 2nd mortgage payment so we will see how MY plan holds up over the next 30 yrs (hopefully only 23yrs if I stick with the plan)

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thats pretty rediculous! My loan got picked up by Wells Fargo and they offered me bi-weekly payments for free