There are a variety of ways in which you can pay off your mortgage early, depending upon your situation.  If you have a lump sum of money to pay off the entire balance you can simply send your lender a check for the full amount with your next payment due date.  It is important to know if there is a pre-payment penalty attached to your loan agreement prior to doing this, as you could incur additional costs of generally 2-3% of the original loan amount.

If your goal is to pay down your mortgage incrementally than you can either send additional principal payments with each normal monthly payment, or send additional principal payments in whatever timeframe you can afford.  There should be a space provided on your payment stub each month where you can indicate the amount of additional principle to be applied to your loan balance.  If you have a fixed rate fully amortized loan additional principle payments will not reduce the required monthly payments, but it will shorten the term of your loan.  In most cases one extra payment a year will reduce the term of your loan by approximately 6 years.

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There are many ways for you to pay down your principle balance early.  The easiest way is to make an additional payment directly on principle each month.  In most states, there is no pre-payment penalty for making additional payments towards principle reduction. 

In many cases, just by making one extra payment specifically towards principle each year, you can pay off a 30 mortgage in 22 years.  You can contact a mortgage professional to have them run a "what if" scenario for you, or use a basic amortization calculator online to determine exact figures.  

Another way is to make bi-weekly payments.  You will want to check with your lender for options.  Remember to keep current with your payments as well.  Your payments will go towards interest first, then escrow, then late fees, or other charges, and lastly towards principle reduction.  If you are behind, any accrued fees are paid down first before principle, so being current with your payments helps as well.

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The best way to pay off your mortgage early would be to make extra payments towards your current mortgage for example if you had a  30 year mortgage at $100,000.00 on your home at a 7% interest rate and you made an extra $50.00 a month in payment and had that applied to your principal balance you could pay your mortgage off in 291 months instead of the 360 months (30 yrs) and if you made any extra $100.00 a month towards your principal balance you would only make 247 payment instead of the 360 months.

Another way to pay off your mortgage early is to refinance into a shorter mortgage like a 10 year (120 months), 15 year(180 months) or a 20 year mortgage(240 months).  You will have a higher principal and interest payment but your mortgage will be paid of in a shorter amount of time. 

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