Any reason to not pay off mortgage early?

Finances

I have a $550k loan ($700k house) at 7% rate.

My wife and I are debating between three options:

  1. keeping our 401ks at maximum contribution rate to Roth (currently what we do). Pay just required monthly mortgage.

  2. Reducing down 401k contribution to the amount needed for employer match, and putting the “increased income” towards the principle of our mortgage.

  3. Something in between (reduce 401k a bit, make slight overpayments on mortgage).

At a 7% rate, I don’t see much reason to not pay down the loan as fast as possible. I know that objectively the stock market CAN (and typically does) return better over the long run, but 7% guaranteed rate of return with zero risk seems pretty good to me. I did the math and I could cut my 30 year loan down to 10-15 years if we make this big shift.

And we’d still have about 6% of our incomes going to 401k, so not like we’d completely stop contributing to retirement.

I guess part of it is that psychologically, it would feel great to have a paid off house. And if we lose our jobs, a big retirement account isn’t going to help us, but a very low house payment would mean we could stay afloat in unemployment benefits, if that were to happen.

Anyone have thoughts on pros/cons of each that I haven’t thought of?

Posted May 5, 2025, 2:09 AM UTC

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