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i would always invest it elsewhere , no question . trapping the extra money in the house rarely makes financial sense , just perhaps feeling good sense . . over time markets prevail nicely.
think about it , the less time you let money sit invested the more your time frame dependent you become . time is your friend .
on the other hand your mortgage ain't changing over time nor is effected by time .
debt that can't change with time growing shorter really has no rush to pay it off . the more you wait to channel money in to investments the shorter the time frame for markets to act on it and the greater the need for your time frame to be better then it may be .
the longer you let markets work on it the greater the odds that you can just about set your watch to the fact you will be up nicely . delay that money and you decrease those chances as time gets shorter .
just following the mortgage schedule as is they would be doing both .
Unless the debt bears interest higher than the historic s&p average you should invest.
If you haven't started, you should invest regardless. Many have a tendency to delay endlessly because new car, kids, new furniture, new phone, new debt etc
It really never ends and the only thing to do is start investing and let that take hold. Then it becomes a savings game and the mere act of just starting pushes you to cut back and push to save more.
That's an impossible question. You can calculate precisely the effect of applying extra payments to the principal on your mortgage but you have no idea what will happen in the stock market. You could double your money or lose it all. Given current bearish market conditions, closer to the latter unless you invest like a genius.
All we can say is that your best "guaranteed" option is to pre-pay the mortgage. That will shorten your loan term and save you lots of interest cost.
odds are well in your favor that if you have at least a decade you won't get hurt . we don't have many time frames in history that took more than just a few years to recover . especially if diversified in to fixed income and assorted market segments .
in fact to date 50/50 has never ever lost money over any 10 or 20 year period . did i say never!
Over the long term, it is pretty easy to invest at a rate higher than what mortgage rates were 4 years ago... so I'd go with the stock market.
But that's the long term. If your investment drops 20% next year, knowing you made the decision that is usually right probably won't make you feel any better.
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