How quickly should you pay off your home?

In my last post I ran a scenario of two people who had similar mortgages, $300,000, with the same mortgage rate, 7%, and with 30 years to pay it off - they also had an extra $500 bucks to burn every month - they could either use it help pay down their mortgage every month or use it to invest a tax deffered account - 401k - every month

Then I asked the question"who comes out ahead financially?"

it was the person that invested in a 401k - that person came out almost $300,000 ahead of the person who payed down their mortgage first THEN invested into a 401k

Well, what happens if we change some of the variables - what if the mortgage is only $100,000 and the extra cash to use to either pay down the mortgage or invest is reduced to $100 per month?

check out Len and Harry...

Well, looks similar to our previous result - the person who invests their money instead of prepaying their mortgage comes out ahead financially - in this case, Harry came out almost $50,000 ahead of Len