If you have $50 extra each month, you can save $48,000 over the life of your loan. Sound crazy? Well, this is no joke. It’s called a bi-weekly mortgage and it can save you big bucks without a big investment. Here's how a bi-weekly mortgage works: instead of making your loan payment once a month, you make your payment every other week. That’s the equivalent of 13 monthly payments. Now, that doesn’t sound like much of a difference: 13 payments a year as opposed to 12. But, on a $100,000 loan, you’d save at least $48,000! And, you’d pay off your loan seven years early. Building equity more quickly will help you even if you don’t plan to stay in your home forever. When you sell, you’ll have more money to invest in your next home. To get the most bang for your buck, have bi-weekly payments drafted directly from your bank account.

You can also make the extra payments yourself. On that $100,000 home, paying bi-weekly will cost you about $50 extra each month. But in the end, you’ll reap a benefit almost a thousand times bigger.