Estimate your monthly payment, see the full cost breakdown, and explore the year-by-year payoff schedule — including extra payments and biweekly payoff.
A mortgage payment usually bundles four separate obligations into one monthly charge. The bank calls it PITI: Principal (paying down what you borrowed), Interest (the cost of borrowing it), Taxes (your share of local property tax, collected monthly and paid on your behalf), and Insurance (homeowner's insurance, and sometimes PMI). Only the first two — principal and interest — are determined by the loan itself; the rest are pass-through costs the lender often collects into an escrow account so you're not hit with one huge tax bill once a year.
Interest is charged on whatever balance is still outstanding, so early in the loan — when you owe the most — the interest portion of each payment is largest and the principal portion is smallest. As the balance shrinks, that ratio flips: more of each identical payment goes toward principal, less toward interest. This is why the amortization schedule above shows principal accelerating and interest fading over the life of the loan, even though the total payment itself stays flat.
Private Mortgage Insurance protects the lender, not you, and typically applies when your down payment is under 20% of the home's value. It's usually removable once your loan balance drops to 80% of the original home price — our calculator estimates that crossover point automatically as the schedule pays down.
Yes — a larger down payment shrinks the loan amount that interest gets charged on, and it can also remove the need for PMI once you clear the 20% threshold, compounding the savings.
Over a 30-year term at a normal rate, it's common to pay nearly as much in interest as the loan amount, sometimes more. That's simply the cost of borrowing over that long a stretch — shortening the term or making extra payments both cut it substantially.
Extra payments go straight to principal, not interest. They don't lower your required monthly payment — they shrink the balance faster, which shortens the loan and reduces the total interest paid over its life.
It's a close approximation. True biweekly billing accrues interest slightly differently than monthly billing; we model the main effect — 26 half-payments a year works out to 13 full monthly payments instead of 12 — which is what drives almost all of the real-world savings.
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