Our Biweekly Loan Calculator Can Help Achieve a Debt-Free Retirement

Pay Me Know or Pay Me Later

With more than 6,500 Baby Boomers turning 65 every day of the year, the subject of retirement is an increasingly vital issue for millions of Americans. While there is much advice and guidance about how to prepare for retirement, one of the single most important considerations is being debt free. Noted financial advisor Dave Ramsey makes the point that being debt free is a matter of attitude. Tools like our biweekly mortgage calculator with extra payments help you develop this attitude by showing just how much money you can save by eliminating debt.

When people calculate the funds they will need in retirement, they usually calculate an amount of money they will receive on their savings. For example, a CD of $100,000 at today’s rates will produce about $1,200 to $1,500 a year in interest income, or a $100 a month or so. On the other hand, if you have a credit card debt of just $6,000 at 18 percent, you have to pay around $100 a month just in interest charges. Think about that for a minute. It takes $100,000 in savings just to pay the interest on a small amount of credit card debt.

When you plan for retirement, you should work to as hard as you can to start retirement without any:

Mortgage payments
Credit card debt
Auto loan payments
Any other monthly debt payments

If you can use tools such as our accelerated mortgage payoff calculator and biweekly loan calculator to see what your debt really costs you, you’ll be motivated to using our Debt-Free Retirement Principles and get rid of your debt earlier than you thought possible.

Pay Principal instead of Interest

Since interest is normally calculated by lenders monthly on your outstanding balance, the faster you reduce that balance, the less interest you pay. Of course, the lenders understand that and like to keep you where your payments are going mainly to the payment of their interest.

If you go to our website, you’ll find some nifty tools that help you understand just how much you can save in total interest payments if you adopt our principles of how to go into retirement without debt.

Both our biweekly loan calculator and accelerated mortgage payoff calculator can give you quick insights with just a little information about your current loans. Our basic approach includes two powerful financial tools. These are:

Lowering your interest costs by splitting your monthly payments in two
Adding a little extra each payment to reduce your outstanding balance.

Getting the Most from Your Payments

As our biweekly mortgage calculator with extra payments will quickly show you, it’s possible to save thousands of dollars in interest and shave years off your mortgage period if you follow our concepts. While these principles work for almost any of your loans and debt, few things beat entering retirement without a mortgage payment.

If you’re approaching the age when retirement is a possibility and you will lose some of your primary income, you’ll find eliminating debt is a lot more powerful for your financial freedom than trying to save. If you can do both, that is all the better. However, as the tools on the Half A Payment™ website, such as the biweekly loan calculator, show, you can help put thousands of dollars in the bank instead of paying interest to lenders.