You have to admire people who say, "I'm tired of living in an apartment. I want to get my OWN home. I want something that's MINE". Well, unless you're Donald Trump and can just dig into your spare change to purchase a home outright, that home is far from yours. Why? Well, it's something called a mortgage. And unless you pay it, month after month for 30 years or whatever, that home will end up belonging to the bank before you can say "Bob's your Uncle".

The truth is, a mortgage is just a fancy term for "rent it now, own it later, IF you live that long and can keep up your payments". Yes, there is always that hope that somebody that mortgage will be paid off and you can have that fancy mortgage burning ceremony. Oh and just for the record, people don't actually burn their real mortgage papers. They make copies and burn those. You do need to show proof that the home is actually yours. But the point is, until that mortgage IS paid off, it's NOT yours. Well, the mortgage is, not the house.

So, what can we do to help speed up the process and pay that mortgage off as fast as we can at the least cost?

Well, the one thing you can do, if you can swing it, is to get a 15 year mortgage instead of the traditional 25 or 30 year mortgage. What this does, besides make you pay your house off quicker, is it lowers the amount of interest you pay. The reason is that you are paying more principal with each payment. Of course, therein lies the rub. Your payments for a 15 year mortgage will be substantially higher than for a 25 or 30 year mortgage. They won't be double however, because you are paying more principal. It's usually about 20% more per payment depending on the Interest rate.

Another thing you can do to make your mortgage a little easier to pay off, if you can't afford the 15 year plan, is to find the best rate that you can. This does involve a bit of work and a lot of shopping around. Fortunately, real estate is such a competitive field that many lenders are screaming for your business. Because of this, they are throwing out interest rates that you'd be insane to pass up on, especially if they're fixed rates. No, we're not even going to get into adjustable rate mortgages, or ARMs, because those are like playing the stock market. You never know where they're going.

One other thing you can do to help pay your mortgage off faster is rent out a portion of your home. If you happen to own a two family home this is very easy to do. With a single family, it's not so simple. But if you have a big enough home, with a little construction, you can create a wing for a college kid who can't afford to live in a dorm. Even a couple of hundred bucks a month will help.

So while it's nice that you "own" your own home, just remember, it's not really yours until that mortgage is paid off.