Mortgage Payoff Calculator

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 Interest is charged on what you still owe

An amortizing mortgage payment is one check that does two jobs. The first job is interest for the use of the remaining balance for one month. The second job is principal, which reduces that balance so next month's interest is smaller. Early in the schedule the interest job takes most of the payment. Later, the principal job takes most of it. That shift is not a bank changing the rules on you. It is the same rate applied to a smaller balance.

The monthly interest factor is the annual note rate divided by 12. A 6.5 percent note uses 6.5 divided by 12 each month, applied to whatever the balance is that month. The box rounds that month's interest to the cent, subtracts it from the payment, and treats the rest as principal, unless the rest is larger than the balance, in which case the last month is smaller. If the payment does not cover the interest, the walk stops and the box says so. You cannot amortize a loan with a payment that does not even pay the interest. Raising the extra principal, or correcting a rate that was typed wrong, is the fix. The box will not invent a negative principal and call it progress.

Extra principal does its work at the end of the loan, not by lowering next month's required payment. You still owe the scheduled payment. The extra dollars are additional principal. Because the balance falls faster, every later month charges less interest than it would have, and the scheduled payment eats principal faster. The loan reaches zero before the original last payment. The months you skip are the months at the back. The interest you skip is the interest those months would have charged, plus the interest you no longer pay in the months you do make, because the balance was lower. That is why a modest extra payment can remove more interest than the sum of the extra checks. The interest not charged is the point. The extra checks themselves are still your cash, sent earlier than the note required.

 Why the box demands years left

The contractual payment is the payment that pays the balance off in the remaining term at the note rate, with interest charged monthly. The standard calculation is balance times monthly rate, divided by one minus (one plus the monthly rate) raised to the power of the negative remaining months. Without the number of months, there is no payment to compute. People ask for a payoff calculator that needs only balance, rate, and extra dollars. That request leaves out the required payment. An extra $200 on top of an unknown payment is not a schedule.

Years left means years remaining today, not the term you signed on the first day. A 30-year note that has already run for three years has 27 years left. Type 27. If you type 30, the box builds the smaller payment that would amortize the current balance over 30 years, which is not the payment your servicer is drafting. The comparison will be wrong in both columns, the one without extra money and the one with it. If you have 14 years left, type 14. If you have a 15-year note that is new, type 15. The field accepts whole years in this box. If you are between anniversaries, pick the nearest remaining year and treat the result as an estimate, then ask the servicer for the real remaining term if you are about to send a large extra amount.

The box ceilings the computed payment to the next cent. A payment that is a fraction of a cent higher than the raw formula is normal in mortgage servicing, because a short payment would leave a few dollars at the end. The walk then applies that payment every month. Your servicer may round differently by a cent here or there. Over hundreds of months those cents move the interest total a little. They do not move the decision if the decision is whether $200 extra is worth it. They do move the result if you need the figure to match a payoff letter to the penny. For a payoff letter, call the servicer. This page will not match a good-through payoff, because a good-through payoff includes per diem interest to a date and any fees in the payoff department. This page is a term-shortening estimate.

 Escrow is not in the payoff math

The draft that leaves your account each month is often larger than principal and interest. The extra amount is escrow: one-twelfth of the expected property taxes and one-twelfth of the homeowners insurance, and flood insurance if the servicer is collecting it. That escrow portion does not reduce your loan balance. It sits in an escrow account so the servicer can pay the bill when it comes due. If you type your full monthly draft into a calculator that thinks the whole draft is principal and interest, you will invent a payment you do not have.

This box never asks for taxes or insurance. It builds only the principal-and-interest payment from balance, rate, and years left. The extra field is extra principal, on top of that principal-and-interest payment. If your draft is $2,200 and the principal-and-interest portion is about $1,800, the difference is escrow and it is not "extra." Typing 400 as extra, when that 400 is really the escrow, tells the box you are prepaying principal you are not prepaying. Look at the mortgage statement. The statement splits principal, interest, and escrow. Use the extra line only for dollars you intend to add to principal beyond the required principal.

When the loan is paid off at a sale, leftover escrow is usually refunded by the servicer after closing, on a different timetable from the payoff wire. That refund is your money. It is not part of this interest-saved figure. A sale payoff and an extra-payment schedule answer different questions. Selling the house pays the loan off on the closing date because the buyer's money satisfies the lien. Sending $200 extra while you live there pays the loan off sooner while you keep the house. Do not use the interest-saved number as if it were cash you receive at a closing next month.

 Prepayment penalty, and where the extra dollar goes

A prepayment penalty is a charge for paying principal earlier than the note allows. Most VA loans and most conventional loans we see in Jacksonville do not have one. Some older notes and some portfolio loans do. The only way to know is to read the note or to ask the servicer to point at the paragraph. The box assumes there is no penalty. If your note has one, the interest saved in the sentence is not your full cost of paying early, and a sale payoff letter will show the penalty as its own number. Nothing on this page adds a penalty.

The servicer has to apply the extra money to principal. Some online payments default to "advance the due date," which means you prepaid next month's bill instead of cutting the balance. That can feel convenient and it does not do what this box assumes. Use the principal-only or additional-principal option. After the first extra payment posts, check that the principal balance fell by the extra amount plus the principal portion of the regular payment. If it did not, call the servicer before you send the second one. A payment coupon with a separate additional-principal line is the paper version of the same instruction.

This box does not recast the loan. A recast is when the servicer takes a lump sum of principal and recomputes a lower required payment over the remaining term. Extra payments here leave the required payment alone and shorten the term. If what you need is a lower monthly obligation because orders cut the household income, a shorter term does not lower the draft. A recast or a refinance might. This page does not price either one and does not quote a rate. Rate quotes change, and a made-up rate would be a lie. Talk to a lender. The VA loan knowledge center is the local starting point for VA-specific questions, including a certificate of eligibility and what a VA loan will and will not do. An IRRRL, a cash-out refinance, and a new purchase loan are different products from an extra $200.

 What the sample $280,000 is doing

The fields open at a balance of $280,000, a rate of 6.5 percent, 27 years left, and $200 extra each month. Here is that walk, using the same steps the box uses, so you can see the sentence instead of treating it as a black box. Twenty-seven years is 324 months. The monthly rate is 6.5 percent divided by 12. Interest for the first month, on the full $280,000, rounds to $1,516.67. The scheduled principal-and-interest payment that amortizes $280,000 over 324 months at that rate, taken up to the next cent, is $1,835.56. The first month of principal on that scheduled payment is $1,835.56 minus $1,516.67, which is $318.89. Most of the first payment is interest. That is the front of an amortizing loan, and it is why extra principal matters: the required principal portion is still small, so $200 extra is a large share of the principal being paid that month.

Add the $200 and the first month's total payment in the faster schedule is $2,035.56. Interest is still $1,516.67, because extra principal does not change interest until the balance drops. Principal in month one becomes $518.89. The next month's interest is computed on the new, lower balance. The box repeats that cent by cent.

Run all the way out and the scheduled loan, with no extra principal, takes 324 months and charges $314,716.10 of interest. With $200 extra every month, the same balance is paid off in 254 months and the interest is $235,038.04. The bottom line is 70 months and $79,678.06 of interest. You still write the extra check for each of those 254 months. That is $50,800 of principal you were going to owe anyway, paid sooner. It is not a fee. Those figures match this sheet: payment rounded up to the cent, each month's interest rounded to the cent, principal limited to the remaining balance, stop when the balance is under fifty cents. A servicer that rounds differently will not hit $314,716.10 to the penny. Do not send this paragraph to an underwriter as a payoff.

If your balance is not $280,000, or your rate is not 6.5 percent, or you do not have 27 years left, the $1,835.56 payment is not your payment. Change the fields. A lower rate lowers both the payment and the interest saved. A shorter remaining term raises the required principal portion, so the same $200 extra removes fewer months than it removes on a long remaining term. A larger extra payment removes more months and more interest, and it also removes more cash from your account every month. The box will show the new pair of schedules when you change the inputs. This written sample will not change with them. The sample is here so the default numbers have a paper trail.

 When extra principal is the wrong move

If you are carrying credit-card or other high-rate consumer debt, the mortgage is usually the cheaper debt. Sending $200 to a 6.5 percent mortgage while a card charges a much higher rate does not win. This page will not invent the card rate. You can read it on the statement. Pay the expensive debt, keep a cash reserve, and then look at extra principal.

If you are about to PCS, cash for the next house can matter more than a shorter amortization on a house you are about to sell. Extra principal you send this month comes back only as a slightly smaller payoff at closing. You do not get a bonus. The interest you avoid is only the interest between now and the sale date, not the 70 months in the sample. A family that drains savings to "pay the house down before we list" can end up short for repairs, for a move, or for the next down payment. Run the horizon you actually have. The box assumes you keep the loan and the extra payment for the whole remaining term.

If the payment is already tight, do not volunteer extra principal to make a calculator look good. The required payment is the obligation. Extra is optional. Missing a required payment to make an extra one is backwards. If you have a VA loan and you are unsure what the entitlement picture is before the next purchase, that question belongs with the lender, and the background is on the VA loan knowledge center. This calculator does not restore entitlement and does not estimate a funding fee.

 What else the box leaves out

Late fees, a forbearance, a modification, mortgage insurance, a VA funding fee that was financed into an older balance, and escrow shortages are outside the walk. If your servicer has rolled an escrow shortage into the draft, that higher draft is not a higher principal-and-interest payment. Do not type the shortage as extra principal. Biweekly payment plans that a third party charges a fee to run are also outside this box. A true extra principal payment does not require a fee to a payment company. You can send it through the servicer.

The rate in the box does not change. An adjustable-rate note will not stay at today's rate for 27 years. If you type today's rate and the note can reset, the estimate is only as good as that rate. The box has no reset schedule. A 15-year and a 30-year comparison is something you do by changing the years field and reading the new payment, not by assuming the payment stays friendly.

Taxes and insurance will change even if you never send an extra dollar. Florida property tax and homeowners insurance are part of the real monthly cost of keeping the house. They are not part of the interest-saved number. Budget them from the bill and from the insurance quote. Do not back them out of the $79,678.06 sample and pretend the sample paid your taxes.

 Homestead is a different topic

Sending extra principal does not file homestead, does not lower the millage, and does not move Save Our Homes. Homestead is an exemption from property tax for a permanent residence you own and occupy on January 1, under section 196.031, applied for under section 196.011. For 2026 the exemption figures, confirmed by the St. Johns County Property Appraiser and matching the Department of Revenue CPI notice, are a total of $51,411. The first $25,000 applies to all levies, including school. The additional $26,411 applies only to non-school levies, and only to assessed value between $50,000 and $76,411. The band from $25,001 to $50,000 stays taxable. The Save Our Homes cap for 2026 is 2.7 percent, the lesser of 3 percent and CPI. That caps assessed value. It does not cap the tax bill. Paying the loan down does not change any of those rules.

If you bought this year and you will occupy the house as your permanent residence on January 1, 2027, you file for the 2027 tax year by March 1, 2027, with the property appraiser in the county where the house sits. The timely deadline for 2026 was March 1, and because that date was a Sunday the timely date was March 2, 2026. St. Johns and Nassau both published the Monday date. As of September 28, 2026, the timely 2026 window is closed. Do not assume a late file is still available. Late filing, when it exists, is for extenuating circumstances and generally only until 25 days after the TRIM notice. Ask the appraiser that day. Nassau has already opened 2027 applications.

File Duval homestead at homestead.coj.net, phone (904) 255-5900, or in person at 231 E. Forsyth Street, Suite 260, Jacksonville, FL 32202. The deed must be in your name before the website will take the file. The office says to allow about 60 days after closing for the deed to post. If it has not posted, file in person. The online session does not save. Clay is the Clay County Property Appraiser, Tracy Scott Drake, ccpao.com, online at exemption.ccpao.com, phone (904) 284-6305 extension 1, 477 Houston Street, Green Cove Springs. St. Johns is Eddie Creamer's office, sjcpa.gov homestead and portability and exemptions, phone (904) 827-5500. Nassau is A. Michael Hickox, ncpafl.com homestead, phone (904) 491-7300. Columbia, for a Lake City house, is in person at Jeff Hampton's office, columbia.floridapa.com, phone (386) 758-1083, 135 NE Hernando Avenue, Suite 238, Lake City. The Columbia exemptions page says the initial application is in person. Do not use a third-party filing site.

Portability of a Save Our Homes difference is Form DR-501T with the new county, generally filed with the new homestead application. This page will not invent the portable dollar amount. One permanent residence. A residency-based exemption in another state can knock out the Florida exemption. The Social Security number is required. A wrongful exemption can create a lien, a 50 percent penalty, and 15 percent interest under 196.161. After approval, the exemption renews until ownership, marital status, or residency changes. None of that is an extra principal payment, and an extra principal payment does not substitute for the filing.

 If you are buying, or about to be

Buyers sometimes land on a payoff page while they are still trying to get a pre-approval. The extra-payment math is for a loan you already have. The loan you are about to take is priced by a lender after a credit pull and a review of documents. This page does not quote that rate. Getting the purchase file started is the buying page, and the people we send borrowers to are on the preferred lenders page. You can use another lender. Get a real review of the file before you waive a financing contingency.

The houses under this article are Duval County active listings, newest first. They are not loans, and they are not sorted by payment. A list price does not tell you the principal-and-interest payment, because the payment depends on the rate, the term, the down payment, the taxes, the insurance, and the association dues. Use the box for a loan you already owe. Use a lender for a loan you have not taken yet. Browse what just hit the market on just listed after the file is far enough along that you know the price range.

 Keep going

Buying a home  |  Preferred lenders  |  VA loan center  |  Just listed

Military Realty of Florida. (904) 309-0609.