If you can pay off your personal loan faster you will save money on interest charges and be out of debt sooner. Here are some tips.

Personal loans are used for a wide range of purposes, such as consolidating credit card debt, funding business ventures, making home improvements and more. If you have taken out a personal loan, you will likely want to pay it off as soon as possible so that you will not have to pay as much interest over the length of the loan.

Here are a few tips for accelerating your loan payments and getting it paid off quicker:

Reduce Spending Where You Can

Take a good hard look at your budget and see if there are any areas that you can cut back on for a while until you have paid off your loan.

For example, can you cancel that expensive cable TV package that you never watch, or cancel your gym membership and go for a jog in the park instead? You could also try to eat out at a restaurant fewer times per week and swap clothes with a friend rather than buying new ones. Any money that you can avoid spending can be directed straight into paying down your loan.

Watch Out for Early Payment Penalties

Believe it or not, some lenders actually charge you a penalty for paying off your loan early! They want you to pay it as slowly as possible so that they will make as much money off your debt as they can. To avoid this, check in the fine print for an early payment penalty before signing up for the loan. You can also talk with your bank to see if they can negotiate this penalty.

Pay Bi-Weekly Instead of Monthly

If you are making monthly payments on your loan, you will actually pay it off faster if you can switch to bi-weekly payments instead. This is because over the course of the 52 weeks of the year, you will have made the equivalent of one full payment more.

However, your individual payments will not have changed very much so this will not have very much of an impact on your budget.

Put all of Your Windfalls Towards Paying Your Loan

Have you received money for a birthday gift, bonus at work, refund, or prize draw? Treat yourself with a small portion of it and then use as much of it as possible to pay down your personal loan. You weren’t counting on the money, so you don’t need it to cover your day to day expenses and therefore it can be used to get you ahead on your loan.

These types of additional payments will have a huge impact on your loan balance and can really help you pay off your loan quicker.

If you can speed up the payment on your personal loan, you will be able to get it paid off quicker and reduce the amount of interest you would have paid.

You will also be free from debt sooner and you can start contributing to a savings account.