Financial milestone reached! Next step?

[W2R]

BTW, your numbers don't seem to add up. I ran them through a savings calculator, and $2666/mo at 2% compounded grows to $133K in 4 years. That's $5K more that your payoff, but you said it would have been $10K less. That's a $15k difference. You did say that your payments were lumpy, but even so I can't see it being that large of a difference.

Hmmmmm, an interest rate difference of 3% (6% mtg and 3% interest) is $3840/yr or $15,360 in 4 years. Mybe that's how you got $15,070?

Regards & congrats!

I got the $15,070 from the actual cash sent in during the time period involved (I am a little OCD about keeping such records meticulously). This can be figured with vs without the irregular lump sum payments. My computations of what my payoff would be with the lump sum payments were within a dollar of what it was. (It's easy to compute with a decent mortgage amortization spreadsheet that can handle irregular payments.)

It was pretty easy to find out how much principal I would have owed after that same period of time had I paid no lump sums. So, that plus the regular payment amounted to $15,070 more than the total that I paid (regular payments plus lump sums).

The reason that it is such a HUGE savings is that when you pay down the principal, no more interest accrues on that. If you don't pay down the principal early, your payments are mostly interest for quite a while.

 

[Canadian Grunt]

I remember the feeling when we got our last loan paid off. Felt like I hit the jackpot (I hadn't, but it felt great).

Why not savor a little of your success now? If you have $2k each month to invest, maybe do that with $1500 and enjoy the extra $500 a month. That will pay for some nice dinners, extra toys for the kids, or just putter it away on a vacation or other enjoyable activity. You earned it, and life is filled with too many uncertainties to put every penny of discretionary income into retirement savings.

In any event, congratulations.

Wise words. I second the statement. Life is too short to bet on one outcome.