Paying your mortgage off early is always a good idea. People don't do it too often because they usually buy as much house as the monthly mortgage they can afford will allow and then they just pay that monthly mortgage and maybe if interest rates drop low they refinance for a lower mortgage but then just go back to paying the monthly amount. The house I now own I bought at just over $100,000 and at the time the best rate I could get was 7.5 percent. On the paperwork you sign when you set up a mortgage, there is a part that shows what you end up paying in total by the end of the 30 years. I was shocked to discover that when it was all said and done I would have paid almost $750,000 for my $100,000 house. Unfortunately because of my financial situation it was a struggle to just pay the monthly payment for the first 15 years. Around that time my Mother passed and my share of the inheritance I got from her was about $125,000 which i immediately uaed to pay off the approximately $70,000 I still owed (this happens because the first 5 years the monthly payment goes almost entirely to interest) I'm not sure how much I ended up saving by paying it off when I could but it was likely around 3 to 4 times what the price of the house was when I bought it. I was so glad to get out from having to pay all that extra money. The only downside is with it being paid off, the bank isn't taking care of your insurance and taxes thru an escrow account so you have to stay on top of that yourself by setting roughly the same amount as your escrow payment aside on your own and then pay the tax and insurance yourself when it comes due. Which is a minor inconvenience in light of the interest you can spare yourself from. Now of course not everyone conveniently comes into a nice inheritance that is enough to pay off your mortgage, but if possible you can look for a home where the mortgage is such that you can afford to pay twice that amount per month and then do so. or if the option is there set up a 15 year mortgage instead of a 30 year mortgage. Either way you'll save yourself from paying out quite a bit of money. Also you'll own you home at a point where you might be able to sell it for a nice profit (depending on how the market is in your area. Or if you don't mind the headdaches of being a landlord you can keep the home you own, get a new home and turn your first home into rental income. If your in the right market you might be able to even get it to where the rental income on your first home, pays the mortgage on your second home.
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