That's rad. I've just made the decision to pay mine off early too because...
1. I could earn more by investing the extra in Vanguard funds, but I'm gonna have enough for the life I want anyway, so who cares?
2. I'll free up even more of my time SOONER by paying of the mortgage. I already only work 25ish hours per week, but still.
Feels great, I'll bet. There's a huge psychological benefit, methinks, to squashing that debt regardless of what the balance in your Vanguard account might have been.
Didn't you just contradict yourself?
I would make more by investing instead. So investing would free up your time sooner rather than paying off the mortgage?
Yeah, I can see how you might read it that way. Let me clarify: I can make more money over the long term by investing in some index funds and leaving the money there for the full life of my 30-year mortgage, but I'm choosing to take those funds and throw them at the mortgage so that I'm not paying it off over a period of 30 years.
The problem I see with investing in index funds (or whatever volatile thing you can think up) and using those contributions + principal to pay off the mortgage is that the balance might be down right around the time I want to pay off my house. I'd rather just pay it off and know it's going to be paid off by XX/XX/20XX date.
Possible middle ground: Open up a 2% CD and contribute to that instead of paying extra against the mortgage balance. Then, when the $$ in the CD is equal to the balance on your mortgage (and assuming CD maturity) , pay it off. This improves your ROI from mortgage payoff, right? If you've got a 4% mortgage and you pay it off with funds that earned 2% over X years, your ROI on the remaining balance you paid off is 6%.
Or is there something wrong with how I'm figuring that?
Man, sorry to jack this thread, which is supposed to be celebrating 401Killer's mortgage squashing :-/.