New Delhi, Oct. 23 -- Have you taken a home loan? Planning repayments before you borrow protects your borrowing capacity and credit score. One simple lever is the EMI: paying a little more each month can cut your interest bill sharply.

Even a Rs.5,000 increase in the monthly EMI can shorten the repayment period by several years and save lakhs of rupees in interest.

Take a Rs.20 lakh home loan at an illustrative 8.5% a year for 20 years. Raising the EMI by Rs.5,000 a month would save about Rs.9.85 lakh in interest, assuming the rate stays unchanged for the whole tenure. Here is the calculation.

At an interest rate of 8.5% per annum and a repayment tenure of 20 years, the borrower's monthly EMI would be about Rs.17,356 (approximately). O...