It is really worth setting up a budget that allows you to pay ahead on your mortgage.  If you can pay an extra $100 a month, you can save yourself tens of thousands of dollars on your total interest paid on your mortgage.  Even paying as little as $25 extra month can save you thousands of dollars.

This only works, however, if you don’t have a prepayment penalty in the terms of your mortgage.  You also get to use the interest paid on your mortgage as a tax deduction and reducing the amount of interest paid will reduce the amount of taxable interest.  Furthermore, you might have other places that would be better served with the money you could use to pay ahead on your mortgage (i.e. high interest credit cards or lucrative investment opportunities).

If you do decide to pay ahead on your mortgage, there are a few ways to do this.  You can make a double payment one month each year or add on money to your principle payment each month.  You might also want to look into a bi-weekly plan that will have you make two payments per month instead of one, but over the course of a year you’ll have made one extra monthly payment that will cut down on your mortgage over the years.