Should I Pay Off My House Early?

Posted on November 19, 2009
Filed Under home mortgage | Leave a Comment

The Controversy

There are a lot of gurus out there who disagree on whether or whether not you should pay off your mortgage early. Many a world war, fought with bloodshed and tears, have taken place over this issue. Me personally, I’m a numbers person. You see, figures don’t lie. And even though liars DO know how to use figures, I will be very honest in my approach in presenting numbers, to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, whether it is good or bad to pay off your house prematurely.

The Stats

Let’s look at the numbers. I will give you two different scenarios regarding the same fictitious people. Lets say that Kevin and Shandra have just borrowed, oops…. I mean bought a house. They took out a loan for $100,000 at 8% interest and the payment is $734/mo. After they pay their note, they have an extra $300 left. Should they invest it for retirement, or should they take the extra money and put it on the mortgage and THEN invest the rest for retirement after the house is paid off?

Now, up to this point historically, mutual funds have averaged approximately 12%. This includes all of the crashes. Now, notice I said AVERAGE. This includes all of the jacked up funds that lasted three weeks and finished in the negative. Now if you would do some research on mutual funds, you could get at least that much if not more. So I will use 12% in the illustration and I will explain more in depth after the illustration. For these illustrations I will use a period of 30 years.

Scenario #1

As I said, this loan is for $100,000 at 8% interest and the payment is $734/month. Now Shandra and Kevin decide to pay that extra $300/month on the mortgage so the total payment will be $1034/mo. If they make this payment every month, they will be out of their mortgage in 13 years! Wow! So, Kevin and Shandra then decide to invest that total payment of $1034/mo in a 12% investment for the 17 years that are left (the amount of time it would have taken them to pay off their house). After 30 years Kevin and Shandra will have $683,792.21.

30 years = $683,792.21.

Scenario #2

Kevin and Shandra, instead of paying the extra amount on the mortgage, decide to invest that $300 in a 12% investment, so they pay the minimum payment of $734 for the entire 30 years. If Kevin and Shandra invest $300/mo in a 12% investment, they will accumulate $95,718.47 after 12 years! After 12 years, the balance on their home will be $83,630.47. If they keep on investing the $300/mo, they will have $1,048,489.24 after 30 years!

30 years = $1,048,489.24.

You can go here and get the rest of the “Should I Pay Off My Mortgage Early?” article. You can also subscribe to the monthly newsletter and get valuable personal finance budgeting information.

Check out practical knowledge about luxury vacation home – please study the page. The times have come when proper info is really within one click, use this opportunity.

Comments

Copyright © 2007 Mortgage-Blog • Using Niches-In-A-Box theme created by JP Schoeffel