Not sure if paying off our house is the best thing to do.?

we bought our home June 2000 for 147+ (give or take a few thousand) and financed 76,000, we now owe 42,000, is it worth taking funds from investments to pay off the house? (NOT out of our 401K) our payments are less than 650.00 a month, but we pay double payments every month. we are not sure what is the best thing to do... pay off and save the money..or just pay the double payments for the next few years????? any advice?

Don't take money from one source to pay of your loan unless it's just not making any interest at all. it's better to double your payments and keep what you've saved. It's very difficult to save money, so as long as you can get by with double payments just leave your investments alone. another way is to put a few extra dollars on your loan and put the rest in a seperate money markey account and when you have enough to pay it off than do so, that way the monay is coming from a source that you have put aside. The only way I'd take from my personal account is if I were going to pay it back within a certain time period. I did that but am about done paying myself. If you spend that extra money you were using for your loan that it's a bad idea, so if you can faithfully replace the monay than that's s good option, otherwise stick with double payments.

I would not pay off your house. You need all the help you can get to off-set the income tax. Your mortgage interest is a deductable item. The longer you have it the better off you will be. However, I would contact a tax professional that could show you how your income tax returns would look with out the Interest write off. That will help you make your decision!

my advice would be to stay as diversified as possible. keep your wealth spread out between realestate and stock investments. I would keep paying down the mortgage and still add to your other investments.

Financially it depends on what those investments are earning in comparison to the potential appreciation of the house. History will tell you that "in the long run" the market will outperform house appreciation. Of course that doesn't take into consideration location either...but in general.

Don't forget to take the tax deduction into consideration as well. Though you likely owe so little that you are almost back to using standard deductions.

my own opinion? you're killing yourself by paying the extra payment. You could be earning 9-13% easily invested in the market and you're essentially earning only 6% paying down your home mortgage. BUT!!!! Sure will be nice to not have a house payment... ;)

Final answer: Do what helps you sleep at night...if the thought of no house payment thrills you more than the thought of a few extra bucks in retirement...pay down the house!

it depends on the interest rate. i'd say most likely, you're making a mistake making double payments. mortgage interest is tax deductible and you can earn 6%+ on your savings.

What are your goals?...if owning your home outright is your #1 goal than pay it off but unless you percieve a cash flow issue that will prevent you from comfortably servicing the debt in the future, from a strictly financial/opportunity cost viewpoint it makes little sense to pay off your mortgage or even pay it down quicker than required by your loan contract. With rates so low and the benefit of the tax deduction it's much more likely that your net worth will increase at a greater rate by not paying down the debt but rather investing the funds in a diversified portfolio. The benefit of price appreciation of the home doesn't change wether you have a mortgage or not...your home will increase/decrease in value based on market conditions so it just doesn't make sense to me to use money that could be used more effectively in other markets to paydown such extremely cheap debt.