Q. If I pay off my house in 10 years will I still have to pay 30 years worth of finance charges?

A.No. With a 30-year mortgage your interest charge is based on the monthly balance. As your balance declines so does your finance charge. When the loan is repaid you owe no more interest.

In the early years of your mortgage, a small part of your payment goes to pay your principal and the rest goes toward interest. But each month your principal goes down, so your interest payments go down, too, leaving more of your payment to be applied to your balance.

If you go to our mortgage calculator, plug in your numbers and hit "show amortization table" you will see month-by-month how this works. You can also add in your additional monthly payment and you will see amazing advantages.

Since we don't know your interest rate or the amount of your mortgage, we ran some sample numbers.

If your rate were 6.25% on a $200,000 loan you would pay $243,312 in interest over 30 years, with monthly payments of $1,231.

Pay that loan off in 10 years and it will only cost $69,472 in interest, saving $173,840, but your payments would go up to $2,246 a month.

If you don't have a mortgage yet, you might consider a 15-year loan because those rates are lower so it would save you even more money. With good credit you could get a 15-year mortgage for about 5.875%. Your monthly payments would be $1,675 and you would pay $101,460 in interest over the 15 years.

But, if you made extra payments and paid it off in 10 years, your payments would go up to $2,208 a month, but your interest payments would total $64,945. This would save you an extra $4,500 from what you would pay on the 30-year.