Let’s see. You own a house, condo or piece of property, but aren’t thrilled about your current 30-year mortgage arrangement. You want to pay it off sooner, but the monthly payments on a 15-year loan are just too rich for your current tastes.

Have you considered a bi-weekly payment plan?

If you realize that it could shave six years and tens of thousands of dollars in interest payments off your 30-year mortgage, it might behoove you.

The basic math on the following example spells it out more clearly: a bi-weekly mortgage payment process on a $200,000, 30-year fixed loan at 7 percent can pay it off in about 24 years – about 75 months sooner than a standard payment plan, with a total of $68,925 in interest savings.

The premise is simple. Instead of making your full payment each month, you make half that payment every two weeks. Of course, on a 52-week schedule, by the end of each year you end up making the equivalent of one additional full monthly payment.

Of course, every lender has its own set of rules and payment options, so the first thing you need to do is check with your lender to find out how they would treat this type of arrangement. In the meantime, Mortgage-X offers more detailed information here, along with several calculator functions that let you plug in your own numbers and compare the options that best fit your specific scenario.

And there are some basic pros and cons to going this route, as Kara McGuire points out in today’s edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Among the caution flags are those for young people who need to maintain financial flexibility and don’t plan on owning the same piece of property forever; and reduced tax benefits that result from paying less in interest payments, which are tax deductible.

If you’ve gone this route, let us know with your comments. What’s worked best for you?