Mortgage Amortization: A systematic way to repay your loan

Mortgage amortization is essentially a loan repayment plan or schedule. It facilitates the removal of the debt burden of the borrower over a certain fixed period of time by making monthly/periodic payments. The payments made through regular, periodic instalments comprise of the monthly interest (including accrued interest on the outstanding debt) and a chunk of the principal balance i.e. a portion reducing the outstanding amount of the actual debt. The amount of monthly (periodic) payments remains the same over the life of the loan.

In the early stages of the period (life) of the loan the actual repayment towards principal will turn out to be very small while that towards interest payment will be very big. In the later stages, however, this case will be reversed.

Amortization involves the 'term' of the mortgage or 'spread' of the repayment schedules over a period of time. A mortgage can well be the longest loan to be taken, meaning, it spreads over the longest period in the process of getting repaid. Mortgages could even elongate to 15, 20, 25 or 30 years. Normally, the shorter the term involved in amortization the lesser the interest one has to pay back. So, amortizing one's mortgage over a lower term might seem plausible. However, it must be remembered that the monthly installments to be paid in case of mortgages amortizing over a shorter period also need to suit one's financial position and earnings/incomes.

Car loans and home loans well conform to the amortization norms because each of them has a fixed payment schedule remaining the same for the life of the loan. Credit card payments, on the other hand, involve a revolving loan and have no definite lifetime or payoff date and change on monthly basis.