Wouldn't it be nice to have a trusted real estate agent or mortgage broker on call, day or night, to answer any of the myriad questions you might have when you are considering your mortgage options for buying a new home or refinancing your current one? That would be a fairly costly proposition, but now there is a better way. You can get answers in the form of accurate figures when you use an mortgage calculator, and best of all, it is free.

If you want to refinance your home to take advantage of today's lower interest rates or to switch from an ARM or interest only mortgage to a fixed rate, you will need to determine the answers to several important questions. You will want to know how much you will save by a reduction in the interest rate you are currently paying, and also evaluate how long it will take to repay the closing costs for your new loan. These questions can be answered in a matter of seconds when you calculate mortgage payments using an online free mortgage calculator. The graphical mortgage calculator will compare the old loan terms with the new one, and you will be able to see at a glance how much you save.

Another question you might have is how could you pay your loan off sooner than the term listed. There are a couple of ways to do this. One is to make additional payments each month that are applied to the principal balance. Even a little bit of money applied on a regular basis can take years off the length of your loan. Another way is to consider paying one month amount extra on your regular payment, and then start paying half of your mortgage amount on the first of the month, and the other half on the fifteenth. Making two smaller payments a month instead of the one big one can also save you thousands of dollars in interest over the life of the loan, and will also shorten the duration of the loan as well. Both of these appealing options can be deduced by the use of an amortization schedule calculator, which will show you how much you can save and how soon you can pay off your mortgage loan.

Perhaps you wish to purchase a home with an adjustable-rate mortgage because you do not plan to keep it longer than the short duration of the term, before the monthly payment increases. There are home mortgage calculators that can show you the savings that you would gain from an ARM as opposed to what you would be paying in a fixed-rate loan for the same home, so you can understand if this option will be a good fit for you.