The ready availability of personal loans online makes borrowing much easier to do. Of course, the other side of taking a loan is repaying that loan. What’s more, the longer it takes to pay a loan back, the more cash you’ll fork over to cover interest charges.

Paying it off early will save you money and put the cash you borrowed back into the lender’s coffers sooner, which means they can write more loans.  In other words, everybody wins when you understand how to pay off a loan faster. The following tips will help you do just that.

Split Your Payments in Two

Let’s say you have a personal loan of $3,5000 and your monthly payment is $135 per month. You’ll actually pay more toward the loan each year if you divide your monthly payments in two and send in $67.50 every two weeks instead of $135 each month.

Here’s how that plays out.

• One payment every month = 12 payments per year.
• Twelve payments of $135 each = $1,620
• One year = 52 weeks.
• One payment every two weeks = 26 payments per year.
• Twenty-six payments of $67.50 each ($135/2) = $1,755.

You’ll make one additional payment every year, but you won’t feel it, because you’ll divide your regular monthly payment in half.

Round Your Monthly Payments Up

Again, let’s say your loan amount is $3,500 and your monthly payment is $135. Setting the interest aside for the sake of easy calculation, you’ll need approximately 26 months to pay off the loan at $135 monthly. Adding another $15 monthly to round the payment up to $150 will pay the loan off in just over 23 months.  Even better, combining this strategy with the one above will pay that $3,500 loan off in just over 18 months.

Pick up a Side Hustle

Sell things on eBay or Amazon—take on a part-time job—do whatever you can to increase your income and apply the extra cash to the loan. Even if you’re just pulling in an extra $150 a month, you’ll kill the loan must faster—particularly if you employ that $150 monthly with the bi-weekly strategy outlined above. That way, instead of $135 monthly, you’ve got $285 monthly. Sending $142.50 every two weeks will pay that loan off in less than a year.

Reduce Your Cost of Living

Perhaps you’re in the habit of grabbing a coffee on your way to work every morning, and your preferred beverage costs $4.75. Multiplied by five, that’s $23.75 weekly, which works out to be $95 monthly. Brew up a pot of Joe at home and your per cup cost will fall to around $.26. That’s a difference of $4.49 per day, which works out to a savings of  $22.45 each week. This will net you an extra $89.80 to apply to the loan each month. Now, instead of just $135 monthly, you’ve got $224.80 you can send. Applying the bi-weekly strategy, that loan is paid off in just over a year. What’s more, anything you can do to lower your living expenses in this fashion will be just as effective.

In Summary

Combining bi-weekly payments with either of the three additional strategies outlined above will help you pay off a loan faster. And, of course, it’ll be even better if you combine all four tactics. Then, using that money to build up an emergency fund once you’ve paid off the loan, you’ll have some cash next time something comes up that might otherwise require you to take a personal loan.