Does Early Mortgage Repayment Still Make Sense?

Early mortgage repayment looks on paper at least like a
wonderful deal If you have a typical mortgage and you are near
the beginning of the mortgage term and make an extra $25 a month
in principal payments, you could potentially save $25,000 in
interest over the life of the loan
Note: The exact amount of early repayment savings depends on the
loan, but, in general, the apparent savings are astounding
In spite of the superficial profit that seems to come from early
mortgage repayment, it’s often not a good decision The tragedy
here is if you would have used that $25 a month to boost your
individual retirement account, or IRA contribution, you would
end up with $50,000 in your IRA account If you would have used
the $25 a month to make extra contributions to your employer’s
401(k) plan, you might have easily ended up with $75,000 in a
401(k) account
The reason for these discrepancies is simple In effect, when
you calculate the interest you save by early mortgage repayment,
or the interest you make by investing in an IRA or a 401(k), you
are making a compound interest calculation Any time you
compound interest over long periods of time, the numbers
eventually grow large But the most important factor driving the
interest rate compounding calculation is the interest rate The
larger the interest rate, the faster the compounding and
ultimately the larger the final value
If you can prepay a mortgage that charges 6% but invest in an
individual retirement account or 401(k) account that will pay
8%, mortgage repayment is actually a terrible idea And,
unfortunately, very small differences in interest rates
ultimately produce very large differences in the final
compounded values
Although early mortgage repayment is a technique that many
financial writers who don’t know better recommend, you are
typically better off using the money you would have used for
early mortgage repayment for additional individual retirement
account or 401(k) contributions The one scenario in which you
could save money through early mortgage repayment is when you
have already taken maximum advantage of these other investment
choices and are still looking for some other place to “save”
additional money

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