My husband and I have officially been home owners for about 1.5 years. We opted to purchase a home that was very comfortably within our "can afford" range at that time ($168K, 30-year mortgage, monthly payment less than 20% of net income). Knowing that we would stay in the house for no longer than 5-10 years and that our incomes would likely grow considerably within that time frame, we hoped that it would be a way to easily start building equity and make a jump to a more long-term home.
We are extremely fortunate to have no other debts. I had a few college loans, which I paid off in full shortly after discovering MMM almost a year ago. My husband and I currently have what we consider a very reasonable savings rate of about 40-50% of our income. In addition to what we save/invest, for the past 6-9 months, we have been making additional principal payments to our mortgage of abut $600 a month. From the calculations I've done, this will save us over $40K in interest over the life of the loan. We have a very low interest rate of about 3.8%.
My question: knowing that we no debt aside from our mortgage, is paying off our house faster with this large additional principal payment each month really worth it? Should we be investing that money instead? Or making a smaller principal payment and investing the rest?
Admittedly, I realize that I may not have given enough information to solve this equation, so ask away if more is needed to give a good answer.
Thanks!