Free Service Cuts Your Mortgage in Half Without Refinancing

HELP CHILDREN BY SAVING $100,000 ON YOUR EXISTING MORTGAGE: The Global Awareness Project is sponsoring a free mortgage reduction service that works with all mortgages, requires no refinancing, and costs nothing to use, yet it can easily save you $50,000 to $200,000 on your existing mortgage. By enrolling in this free service, you are automatically helping to raise funding for The Global Awareness Project's humanitarian educational programs for schoolchildren, which help promote self-esteem and global citizenship ideals in America's youth. To find out how you can help kids simply by saving money on your own mortgage, visit www.HelpKidsForFree.com.

Parsippany, NJ (PRWEB)February 20, 2004 -- If you're like most Americans, your biggest lifetime expense will be purchasing a home. And this generally means taking out a mortgage. However, the interest you will pay during the life of your mortgage loan can double or even triple the actual cost of owning your home.

What's more, you can make payments for years and still see very little equity build up. For example, if you had a $100,000 mortgage with a monthly payment of $1,000, after making payments for five years, you would have given your lender $60,000 -- more than half the purchase price of your house. However, you would only have paid off approximately $3,000 of your original loan amount. The other $57,000 went to paying interest on the loan -- pure profit for your lender, but bad news for you. If you were to sell your home at that point, you would not even have enough equity built up to cover the realtor's commission.

If you analyze the terms of most loans, you'll find that after making payments for 15 years on a 30-year mortgage, you'll still owe 90% of the amount you originally borrowed. After 23 years, you'll still owe more than 50% of the amount you borrowed. This can make it difficult for families to get ahead financially.

You can substantially reduce the amount of interest you will pay by using a simple financial technique that has been used successfully by millions of people since the 1980s. It is easy to set up, costs nothing to do, works with all mortgages and is accepted by all lenders, yet most homeowners never take advantage of it, either because they don't know about it or they don't understand how to do it properly. It's called a bi-weekly payment plan, and it can build your equity faster and reduce the cost of owning your home by $50,000, $100,000, even $200,000 -- all without refinancing.

Bi-weekly mortgage programs have been recommended by the New York Times, Business Week, Consumer Reports, Forbes Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, and many other top financial experts as a smart way to drastically reduce the cost of owning a home. Simply by switching to a bi-weekly schedule, you can pay off your mortgage early and save an average of $100,000.

Financial expert David Bach, author of "Automatic Millionaire," recently appeared on Oprah to discuss his three-step plan anyone can follow to become a millionaire. One of the steps he recommends is buying a home and paying down the mortgage using a bi-weekly mortgage plan. Bach explains that this "will reduce your 30-year mortgage by five to ten years and shave tens of thousands of dollars off your interest payments."

To take advantage of this method, all you need to do is change the way your payments are applied to your mortgage. Most mortgages require 12 payments each year, one payment per month. With a bi-weekly system, however, you make one half-payment every two weeks. In other words, if your monthly mortgage payment was $1,000, you'd pay $500 every two weeks instead. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, with a bi-weekly mortgage this adds up to 26 half-payments, which equals 13 full payments.

By adding just one extra payment each year directly to the principle of your loan, a bi-weekly program offers three major advantages over your current monthly program: You save an astonishing amount of money in interest (the typical homeowner saves more than $80,000), you build equity 300% faster, and you own your home ten years sooner, on the average.

How is it possible to save so much money simply by adding one extra payment each year? It's because in the early years of your mortgage, less than 10% of each monthly payment is applied to the principal of your loan. The other 90% goes to paying interest. Therefore, by applying more money to your principal, you accelerate the rate at which your loan is repaid and your equity is built.

Homeowners who have the self-discipline to send a half-payment every two weeks for the next 15 to 20 years can easily cut their mortgages in half. Unfortunately, 97% of homeowners who try to do this on their own never stick to it consistently, or they make mistakes, costing them thousands of dollars in savings.

There are a number of companies that will manage your bi-weekly payments for you, making the process automatic and eliminating all of the guesswork and potential for errors. Without changing your current mortgage, you can save thousands of dollars and own your home years earlier by having your mortgage professionally managed.

According to Barron's, "Using this system, a young couple can buy a home, pay it off in seventeen years, and perhaps in the prime of their lives, enjoy a sudden spurt of monthly cash flow for investments, travel, or college tuition payments."

Bi-weekly mortgage reduction service can also be used to save money on other types of loans, such as second mortgages, commercial mortgages, auto loans and boat loans, because the process works with virtually any type of loan. This is also good news for people who have less than perfect credit and are stuck with higher interest rate loans as a result. The interest savings generated with bi-weekly management can offset the higher costs incurred with these loans.

Most bi-weekly mortgage management companies charge a "set-up" fee ranging from $395 to $1,000, and many homeowners are reluctant to pay a fee for something they could do on their own. However, one company, Information Brokerage Systems, does offer this service free of charge for the entire remaining life of your loan, and by enrolling in this free service, you can help participate in raising money for a worthy cause. The banks who manage the mortgage accounts will make a monthly donation on your behalf to The Global Awareness Project at no cost to you, for as long as you remain enrolled in the service.

Simply by taking advantage of the free service offered through The Global Awareness Project, homeowners are automatically helping to raise funds for the project's humanitarian educational programs for schoolchildren, which promote self-esteem and global citizenship ideals in America's youth. "At The Global Awareness Project, we wanted to find a way to raise funds that would also help families at the same time," states Doria Gambino, the director. "We have created a unique method of fundraising that puts money into people's pockets rather than taking money out of people's pockets. Hardworking families can save $50,000 or more on their mortgages and help our organization raise needed funds for children's programs, all for free, simply by spending ten minutes on our website."

Bi-weekly mortgage management service simply restructures how your payments are applied to the outstanding balance due on your mortgage. Each month, through electronic transfers and verified checks, your regular mortgage payment is automatically paid, and all the credit your account accumulates is applied directly to your loan's principal. Over time, this adds up to a substantial reduction in interest.

Using a bi-weekly service does not require any changes to your existing mortgage agreement. You do not fill out any loan documents, go through credit approvals, or pay any closing costs, because you are not refinancing or changing lenders. Bi-weekly programs allow you to keep your existing loan with your existing lender while reaping the benefits of mortgage reduction.

Even if you've been making house payments for years, it's never too late to begin saving money through this method. "I enrolled in this free service last year when I found out I'd save $167,000 on my house," says Jenny Kassals, a New Jersey-based stockbroker. "It's so simple. Everything is done automatically, so I don't have to worry about it. I can think of much better things to do with $167,000 than give it to my mortgage lender, and I like knowing that it's helping children."

For more information and for a free mortgage analysis that will show you exactly how much money you will save on your current mortgage by enrolling in a bi-weekly plan, please visit www.HelpKidsForFree.com.
              
ABOUT THE GLOBAL AWARENESS PROJECT

Mission Statement: "Our goal is to create a better future for our world by showing young people how they can make a difference in their communities by learning to think globally."

The school systems teach reading, writing, math, history. While academic skills are important, equally important in many ways are people skills: self-esteem, respect, understanding, cooperation, purpose, future vision, planetary stewardship -- in other words, global thinking.

A new project has been launched to address these concerns at a grass-roots level. It is the goal of The Global Awareness Project to develop educational programs that will allow students to discover their potential as global citizens, and train them in the skills they can use to make a difference in the world around them. Through a series of classroom, family, and community projects, students will have the opportunity to participate in programs that enhance their self-esteem, promote tolerance and understanding of cultural diversity, foster communication skills and conflict resolution skills, improve health and well-being, enhance human and animal rights, promote environmental awareness and earth-friendly lifestyles, and encourage volunteering, community involvement, and long-term planning for future generations.

The Global Awareness Project
81 Redstone Drive
Parsippany NJ 07054
(973) 402-4054
Doria Gambino, Founder/Director
www.HelpKidsForFree.com