Any reason to not pay off mortgage early?
I have a $550k loan ($700k house) at 7% rate.
My wife and I are debating between three options:
-
keeping our 401ks at maximum contribution rate to Roth (currently what we do). Pay just required monthly mortgage.
-
Reducing down 401k contribution to the amount needed for employer match, and putting the “increased income” towards the principle of our mortgage.
-
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