How to Money · Monday, June 29, 2026
A listener asks about mortgage 'hacks,' specifically paying an extra amount monthly to reduce the loan term. The hosts advise prioritizing higher-interest debts like credit cards and ensuring an emergency fund and retirement contributions are in place before focusing on mortgage principal reduction.
“My feed is full of mortgage hacks to save or cut years of payments over the years. Looks like I have to take my principal and my interest and then divide by six and then pay on the fifteenth of the month to get the benefit. Does anyone else do this. Mine looks like it would be an additional one hundred and ninety dollars a month.”
“Part of me thinks I could do this, but then the other part of me is thinking I should put that money somewhere else.”
“First I got to say I love the desire to get rid of debt. I mean, I think that is a good thing, and there is in terms of even when we're thinking about optimization, we also have to think about the negative realities that having too much debt on our plates comes along with right And so I guess the first question I would ask this listener is whether they have other forms of debt, because if so, chances are high that it's worth paying off those first, that the mortgage debt is just like the very least of your problems.”
“On the other side of the equation is what else you could do with that money? And I'm talking about investing, right, like, I don't know if you are investing your dollars, but on the positive side of the ledger, if you don't already well even before that, if you don't have a really good emergency fund, well you need to do that.”