Q: What is your view about making a standard monthly mortgage payment vs. a pay-every-two-weeks program with a $350 enrollment fee?

A: I generally like the idea, but you shouldn’t have to pay a fee to do it.

Dig out your mortgage contract and read it top to bottom. It’s unlikely you’ll find any restriction on extra payments to principal, which is the remaining amount you owe on the loan.

If this is the case, you can simply add some extra money to your regular monthly mortgage payment and get the same benefit offered by this twice-a-month program — without the fee.

In fact, the coupon you enclose with your ordinary monthly payment may have a space to fill in an extra principal amount. If not, ask the lender how best to do this.

Clearly, your lender would like to charge a fee for making the process convenient. I suppose that’s reasonable if someone has to deal with your account twice a month instead of once, though $350 is pretty steep.

Here’s how these bimonthly programs work:

You make two half-payments each month instead of one full payment. But since a year has 52 weeks, you’d make 26 payments — equal to 13 full-sized payments. In other words, you’d make an extra payment every year.

The extra payment reduces the principal, or remaining debt. In the following year, you’d continue to make payments of the same size. But since the principal is lower, the interest charge is lower. Therefore, a bit more of your payment would go to reduce principal.

Repeating the process over the years has a snowballing effect, allowing you to pay the mortgage off early and save a mountain of interest charges.

Imagine a $200,000 mortgage for 30 years charging 6 percent interest. The payment for interest and principal would be about $1,200 a month.

By making two $600 payments a month, you’d pay the loan off 5 1/2 years early and save $49,600 in interest. You’d get the same result by simply adding $100 to every ordinary monthly payment.

With this voluntary approach, you can skip the extra payment if money is tight or you find a better use for it, while you’d be obligated to make the extra payment if your signed up for the twice-a-month program.

Unless you need that forced discipline, there’s no reason to pay a hefty set-up fee.

Does it really make sense to pay a mortgage off early?

It depends on other uses you might have for the money spent on the extra payments.

Think of the extra mortgage payments as an investment. The investment “return” is equal to the interest rate on the mortgage. At 6 percent, every extra dollar put into the mortgage saves you 6 cents a year in interest, which is the same as earning 6 cents a year.

If you can get a higher return on another investment, put the money there.

Keep in mind, though, that the return you get on extra mortgage payments is a sure thing. So you should compare it with other rock-solid investments, such as bank savings or government bonds, rather than risky investments such as stocks. These days, not many safe, guaranteed investments pay 6 percent.

On the other hand, money put into your mortgage is not “liquid” — you can’t get at it without selling the house or using the property as collateral on a new mortgage or home-equity loan.

To assess the benefits of various approaches, download the Home Buyer’s Calculator Suite offered at the Web site of the mortgage-data firm, HSH Associates, at www.hsh.com.