Threshold explorer
Pay down the mortgage, or invest?
A guaranteed return against an expected one. Move your rate and see where the balance tips — and how the deduction and the years remaining shift it.
The line marks roughly even ground: 5.50%.
Around 6% this is genuinely close
Near 5.5% the expected advantage of investing is small enough that it disappears into the uncertainty. Both choices are defensible here, so the honest tiebreaker is which one lets you sleep.
Extra mortgage payments earn exactly your interest rate, with certainty. That is a genuinely good return when the rate is high and a mediocre one when it isn't — which is why the same person can reasonably prepay a 7% loan and invest alongside a 3% one.
The comparison is not purely mathematical. Prepaying converts liquid money into home equity you can only reach by selling or borrowing, while investing keeps it available and taxable. Where the numbers are close, that difference often decides it.
This is one decision. See the whole picture.
The same engine runs a short guided journey that puts this decision in order against everything else competing for the money.
Common questions
We'll tell you when this decision moves
Rates and tax rules are what tip the balance between paying down a loan and investing. One email a month, only when something actually changed.
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