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The quiet power of one extra payment a year

Accelerated biweekly is the simplest mortgage hack in Canada, and it works because of a calendar quirk. There are 52 weeks in a year, so 26 biweekly periods. If each biweekly payment is exactly half your monthly payment, you make 26 half-payments — the equivalent of 13 monthly payments, not 12. That thirteenth payment goes entirely to principal.

Why one extra payment removes years

The reason a single extra payment a year has such an outsized effect is timing. It lands early, every year, while the balance is still large — so it stops a disproportionate amount of future interest from ever accruing. Each dollar of principal you pay down now is a dollar that never compounds against you for the rest of the amortization. Compounded over 25 years, that one habit typically removes a few years from the loan and tens of thousands of dollars of interest, without you ever feeling a large monthly increase.

A worked example: a $550,000 mortgage

On a $550,000 mortgage at an assumed 4.59% rate (illustrative, not a quote; see today’s rates) over 25 years, the monthly payment is about $3,070. The accelerated biweekly version is simply half of that — about $1,535 every two weeks. Because 26 of those equals 13 monthly payments a year instead of 12, you pay roughly $3,070 extra toward principal annually. The result: the mortgage clears in roughly 21½-22 years instead of 25, and you save on the order of $57,000 in interest, assuming the rate stays the same for the full amortization. The exact figures for your balance, rate and amortization are in the result panel above, and you can see the full year-by-year breakdown in the amortization schedule calculator.

Accelerated vs. plain biweekly — don’t confuse them

The word that matters is “accelerated.” A plain biweekly schedule just divides your annual monthly total into 26 smaller debits and pays off on almost exactly the same schedule as monthly, with negligible interest savings. Only the accelerated version, a true half-of-monthly every two weeks, creates the extra payment. When you set up or renew, confirm the frequency is accelerated, line the payment dates up with your pay cycle, and stack it with your annual prepayment privilege for even faster payoff. We offer accelerated biweekly when setting up your mortgage and align it with your pay cycle — and shop your rate across 100+ lenders so the base payment starts as low as possible.