A mortgage payment can easily be the biggest bill in a monthly budget. Coming up with that money can be easy in some months and more difficult in others. Turning those difficult months into easier ones is possible with a few tactics.
Here are five hacks to help make paying your mortgage a little easier each month:
Get a side job
Just earning $500 extra a month — or $125 per week — can make paying a mortgage easier. To do this, get a side job for one or two hours per day at a gig you enjoy.
Consider dog walking, house sitting, driving for Uber, delivering meals or teaching a class at your local community center. Set each paycheck aside for your mortgage bill.
Rent out a room
There are several options for renting a room and making some money on the side. You can be a full-time, live-in landlord and rent out a room to a tenant by the month.
Airbnb allows users to rent rooms on their schedule — one day at a time, a weekend, week or longer. Or rent your entire house for a few weeks while you’re away on vacation.
Rent or sell your stuff
From your car, bike, surfboard and other gear, you can make some extra money by renting out your stuff when it’s idle.
If you want to get rid of something you’re not using, then sell your unused books, bike, clothes, furniture and tools, among many other things, on sites such as eBay, Craigslist, Amazon and used book websites.
Use a work bonus or tax refund
A bonus at work or a tax refund can seem like found money, and it’s easy to spend it on a splurge such as a vacation.
Another use it to put it toward your mortgage for a month, saving you a payment and giving you a month of relaxing by not having to pull money from your regular budget to make a house payment. It can free up your other funds to invest or put aside in an emergency fund for a rainy day.
Pay down the principal
The above tips are meant to help you come up with some extra money so that your monthly mortgage payment is easier. While that can be good in the short term, you can also use the extra money to reach the long-term goal of paying off your home loan earlier. If your loan doesn’t have a penalty for prepayment, then add to what you pay each month to your mortgage bill, and be sure to specify that the extra amount goes toward the principal.
It will help you pay off your mortgage faster and will save you thousands of dollars in interest over the life of the loan.
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