Simple Tweaks to Slash Seven Years Off Your Mortgage

What if a few simple tweaks could buy you seven mortgage-free years and save over $200,000 in interest? In this episode, Casey Taylor breaks down a clear $500,000 at 6% mortgage scenario to reveal how weekly repayments, a $100-per-week top-up, and a smart offset account can slash loan terms and interest fast.

You’ll learn how banks calculate interest daily, why switching from monthly to weekly repayments adds the equivalent of an extra month each year, and how a small weekly boost compounds into massive savings. We also unpack how an offset account reduces interest by shrinking your daily balance, and how combining strategies can reduce a 30-year mortgage to around 18–19 years with $210k–$230k saved.

Casey then dives into mindset and long-term strategy: should you aggressively pay down owner-occupied debt, or blend debt reduction with strategic property investment using equity, buffers, and smart risk management? You’ll get a clear, balanced framework for choosing what aligns with your goals.

Perfect for homeowners, investors, or anyone looking for mortgage hacks and interest-saving strategies. If this episode helped, follow the show, share it with someone paying a mortgage, and leave a quick review to help more Australians build wealth and reduce debt sooner.

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Your Mortgage Costs Double
• 2:10 Strategy 1: Switch To Weekly Repayments
• 4:57 Strategy 2: Add $100 Per Week
• 6:47 Strategy 3: Master The Offset Account
• 9:06 Strategy 4: Combine Extra + Offset
• 10:20 Beyond Paydown: Using Equity Wisely
• 11:24 Recap, Share, And How We Help

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

How to pay off your mortgage seven years faster, saving you a massive amount of time off your mortgage in terms of years, but also saving you thousands of dollars. My name is Casey Taylor. I'm the host of the podcast. And in today's episode, we are talking about some strategies that you can implement with your mortgage to really get yourself ahead without dramatically changing your lifestyle. Once you understand some of the core fundamentals of having a mortgage and how you can manipulate that quite easy, it can be powerful to pay that mortgage off sooner. I'm going to go through multiple strategies today, and that strategy is going to be based off a loan scenario, which I'll give you now, so you'll understand that. Obviously, if you have a lower loan amount or you have a larger loan amount, these numbers are going to change. But you can see those core principles as to how these strategies can be effective. So for this mortgage scenario, we have a loan amount of$500,000. We have an interest rate of 6%, and we have a loan term of 30 years principal and interest. So the 500,000, 6% interest rate over 30 years means that we have a mortgage each month of$2,998 per month. Now, over that 30-year period, the total interest that you would pay is$579,191. The total repayments over that 30 years is$1,079,191. So you're essentially paying double the amount of that loan because of the interest. That interest is more than what the loan balance is. And this is really where, for an owner-occupied property, where you can't claim that interest as an expense and a tax deduction, this is where it's great to get your owner-occupied property. It's great if that property performs. But are you really that far ahead when you have to go and pay that interest on that mortgage that you can't claim as a tax deduction? Whereas if you're looking at that investment property, those expenses are a tax deduction. So there is benefit there. All right, so let's get into strategy one. And this one is a really, really easy and simple change that you can implement. The lender's always going to give you your monthly repayments and calculating that interest generated with monthly repayments in mind. Now, it's super important to remember when you're holding a mortgage that interest is calculated, calculated daily. And because of that, if we can make this scenario happen that I'm about to explain, it's calculating on a lower loan balance, but we're also adding just one extra repayment per year. So with that, with that monthly repayment, if we simply divide that by four and then pay that weekly, over that period of time, we're going to make an extra monthly repayment per year. That's an extra$3,000 for this scenario over a year. So that is a small amount that you need to sacrifice. That could be a couple of beers at the pub. It could be a couple of coffees. Some really small changes to be able to implement this, pay that every single week as an automated payment, you're going to have some massive savings. So you would save$69,000 in interest. You would save over three years of time paying your mortgage off. So the loan term would reduce to 26 years and 10 months. So essentially, you're going to save three years at the end of your loan term of repayments by just making that small 1% change. I feel like anyone out there who has a mortgage can go and implement that change right now and make a dramatic difference. If you currently are not implementing this, you need to be able to go out and do it. And you will simply just adapt to that auto payment. You'll adapt to that slight rise in repayments on a monthly basis and you'll just adapt your lifestyle to that. It's the same where we saw interest rates increase over the last couple of years. People do start to adjust. They don't spend that discretionary expenses like they were. And if it's$20,$30,$40 a week, everyone can make that happen. Strategy number two. Now this one is a little bit higher in terms of those repayments. And this would be paying an extra$100 per week on top of your regular repayments. Now this one is going to be far more significant. We know obviously, based on that strategy one, that it's not as high of an amount you're contributing extra to those mortgage repayments.$100 extra a week, again, we can all look to save that within our discretionary. There's a lot of people out there that spend that easily on alcohol per week. They might spend that on discretionary eating out. Some of those things can easily be reined back in. And some people might say, well, I don't want to do that. But on the flip side, if it's going to save you seven years and one month or$145,000 of interest, you would start to really consider that and think that is a very good return on investment. So that would reduce the 30-year loan to 22 years and 11 months. Like I said,$145,000 saving in interest and paying that off seven years faster, which is a massive, massive difference. If you can go out and secure your 30-year loan now and pay that off in 23 years' time instead of 30, what would your life look like for that seven-year period where you don't have those mortgage repayments anymore? You could then be putting that towards traveling. You could be putting it towards whatever your hobbies are. It's a massive, massive difference there. Just converting to pay an extra hundred dollars per week. Now, strategy three, this is implementing and utilizing an offset account. You should always have an offset account in place, whether it is a large chunk of money that you have, for example, as savings, or whether it might just be an operational account, a transaction account that you're using, if you can operate out of that as your expenses but have that balance there, it's still going to be positively influencing and reducing that mortgage. Now, I will explain very simply how that offset account works. And we have that$500,000 mortgage. If we have$50,000 in that offset account, and remembering that mortgage is calculated daily, the$500,000 would then deduct$50,000 off holding in the offset account, and you'd be paying interest on the difference between the two being$450,000. So you're paying interest on a far smaller loan balance, saving a lot in terms of those repayments. Now, with that saving, you continue to make your repayments each week that you're obligated to. However, it's that compound effect with that loan balance. Now, if you hold$52,000 in your offset account based on the scenario of that$500,000, that would be a remaining loan balance of$448,000. Now, if you consistently for the life of the loan had just$52,000, that would save seven years off your mortgage. It would also save$145,000. So it's back to 23 years instead of that$30,000. Saving seven years is massive. So that's another one that you can implement. And it might mean that you take your mortgage out, you don't have a large cash buffer right now. You might only have five or ten grand. But as time goes on, you have that monthly surplus, it's building up in that offset account. In 10 years' time, your offset account might hold$100,000. So that's why we're just looking at that$52,000 over 30 years. Now, strategy number four is combining the two together. So if we were to pay$100 per week extra on the mortgage and we're holding$52,000 in the offset account, it starts to get some pretty, pretty crazy results. So just to remember, the$1,000 per week extra is going to save seven years. The$52,000 holding over that 30-year period would save seven years as well. Now, if we combine those two together, the loan term would actually drop 18 to 19 years. The interest you would save is 210 to 230,000. So there's a massive, powerful difference there if you can combine the two. So it's over$200,000 you're saving in repayments, but you're knocking off a massive, a massive amount of those repayments. It's a decade savings in terms of those repayments. It's very powerful if you can complete that. So if you can sacrifice now, if you can make those habits to really start to pay off that mortgage, it can mean a massive, massive difference. Now, an episode for another day is not always focusing on just paying down your owner-occupied per mortgage, but using the equity, using your additional cash flow to go out and purchase a high performing asset. Because that compounding effect on the larger wealth base is going to be super powerful long term. That's just a couple of the strategies you can implement. If you're a mortgage holder right now and you're not doing some of these things, these are easy changes you can go and implement very easily tomorrow to be able to start saving some cash. So just remember paying weekly instead of monthly, automating that, it's going to save you three years. Paying an additional$100 per week on your mortgage is going to save you seven years. Utilizing that offset account with the$52,000 on average over the mortgage, it's going to save you seven years as well. Combining the two, it's really going to reduce that time that you're paying to the mortgage over around a decade. I hope these are some strategies that you might see some value in. Or if you have a friend or family member you know isn't implementing these strategies right now, send this episode through to them so they can check it out. They can get educated around the finance piece with their mortgage because it's going to make a powerful difference in their future. We run a buyer's agency here at Tailored Property Wealth. If you want help in purchasing an investment property and you want to make an educated decision when you're going out there and purchasing, reach out to us and we can have a chat and see if you might be one of the clients that we choose to work with each month. I hope you've enjoyed this one and we'll see you on the next episode. Bye.