If you have a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage here are a few tips that can save you thousands of dollars in interest and cut years off your mortgage:

Increase your monthly payment amount - Round up your payment to the nearest hundred dollars. Sounds simple, well it is. Let's say you have a $100,000 30-year mortgage at 8 percent. Your monthly payments would be about $734 dollars. If you rounded your monthly payments by $66, you will save over $48,000 in interest and shorten your mortgage by 7.5 years. That is a good return on your $66 monthly investment and it makes good retirement sense.

Apply your tax return - Say you have a $1,000 tax refund coming. If your mortgage is the same $100,000 (a real possibility if you have new homeowner deductions) and apply that refund as a one-time extra payment on your mortgage, you will save over $8,600 in interest and shorten your mortgage by 1 year and 1 month. That's a good return on money you had already set aside.

Start with a 15-year mortgage or increase your payments to match one - If you can afford it your payment will increase by about $200 to $955 and you would save over $92,143 in interest payments over the 30-year schedule.

Invest the difference - Another technique money-smart homeowners are using is to place the additional dollars into a solid growth mutual fund. This provides several advantages: 1) The monies are always liquid, you keep control of dollars; 2) the investment give a higher return than the interest rate on your mortgage; 3) you preserve the entire tax benefit of home ownership including a full interest rate deduction; 4) You can pay off the mortgage with a lump sum if you choose.

If your mortgage exceeds $100,000 just calculate the additional payment amounts
and savings.