<prompt> Human: Ive been making additional payments to my mortgage to get it paid off as quickly as possible. with each payment my next due date gets further out into the future. I saw some information somewhere once about how this means you are prepaying interest that would never accrue rather than having your entire additional payment go towards principle, but it wasnt explained very well. can anyone explain this to me and what i need to be doing?  <response>: It sounds like theyre just crediting your account, and paying only the required amount for each month, rather than paying the loan directly when you give them the cash.For example, itd be like if I had a 10 loan, with monthly payments of 1.25 a month for 10 months. I give my lender 10. If its not applied to the principle, then theyll just take that 10, and only pay off 1.25 each month, and act as if I just prepaid for the next 8 months. Id still be on the hook for the last two months.What I really want though, is for that 10 to just pay off the loan entirely, or go towards the principle. That way, the 10 I give them settles the loan entirely, and I dont pay any more interest.Contact your lender or mortgage servicer and tell them you want the extra payments you made to be applied to the principle. 