Thanks for the welcome and the replies/advice. Our mortgage rate is 3.2 so low. I should have provided more about our motivation in the initial post but the desire to get rid of it is my wife and my strong dislike of debt and the anxiety we get having it. Also, neither of us enjoy our careers but a career change would result in at least a 50%+ pay cut. Lastly, our kids are 1 & 3 and in a couple of years my wife is going to request to go part time or change jobs/careers to be around them more and not having a mortgage makes that easier (or at least us more comfortable with the change).
No we don't have Roth 401k options or after-tax 401k options - i wish!
I'll explore the early withdrawal links ! Thank you for those MDM!
Schmerna, For the backdoor Roth - we are in a high tax bracket and the new changes aren't favorable to us. so from what i understand about Backdoor IRAs now wouldn't be a good time for us to do that. Do you have more info on them you can share on them?
Thanks again for the advice everyone! Based on it, I think we'll keep maxing the 401ks, but keep splitting the surplus between the brokerage and mortgage. I understand from a numbers stand point, leaving the mortgage alone and investing the extra is best but i can't picture myself regretting the decision once the mortgage is gone!