In this “there’s an app for that” world you aren’t at all surprised anymore by what you can find on the iTunes store, from apps that tell you how to eat and what to wear each day to those that simulate zombies chasing you in order to motivate you to exercise. Yes, it’s a brave, new world of technology, and the best part is that once-complicated tasks have become ridiculously easy to carry out. Take for example the act of buying a home. Whereas you used to rely heavily on your realtor to find you properties that met your criteria, you can now use sites like Zillow and Trulia to track down homes that suit your wants and needs. Instead of depending on a loan manager at your bank to calculate your potential monthly payments, you can simply plug the numbers into one of several mortgage calculators for your smartphone and crunch them yourself. But what about when you get into your home? Are there apps that can help you to track your mortgage payments and see what you still owe? As a matter of fact, there are several and the one that seems to be the most foolproof is Mortgage Payoff Track for the iPhone and iPad.

Unless you happen to be well-versed in finance, you might have a difficult time understanding how amortization works in practice, even if you have a good grasp of it in theory. While it’s simple enough to figure out what will happen when you pay your mortgage every month (a portion will go to the principle and another will go to the interest), you might want to see how the balance of what you owe shifts when you make additional payments specifically towards the principle. How much will it lessen the amount you still owe, the amount you’ll ultimately pay in interest, and the life of your loan? These are questions that can be difficult to answer on your own, but Mortgage Payoff Track does a lot more than simply track your payments: it gives you the tools to answer these questions.

The application starts you off like you might expect, by asking you to enter pertinent information about your loan, including the total amount borrowed, the interest rate, the term of the loan (generally 30 years), the number of payments you make annually and the start date. From there it calculates your monthly payment (which you probably already know) and sets up a table that shows your payments, the amount that goes towards principle and interest, and what you still owe after each payment has been made. You can also view this information on a graph. From there you can add payments to the balance on your principle and see how exactly how much each payment reduces the amount of interest you’ll pay over the life of your loan.

What makes this different from other apps is that most require you to add additional payments to the principle as a monthly, recurring addition to your current loan payments. Since the amount you can afford to tack on could differ from month to month, this doesn’t really help you. But Mortgage Payoff Track lets you get a clear view of just what each extra payment will save you, and you can clear it out of your history if you don’t end up paying what you thought you might in any given month. This app won’t help you find the perfect property. And you can get first time home buyer info at Ratesupermarket if that’s what you’re looking for. But if you already own a home and you want to pay it off sooner, this freebie can give you just the tools you need to check your math, see the savings, and decide what you can afford to add to your current mortgage payments.