Do This One Trick and Pay Down Your Mortgage in Half the Time. ⏱️

Brock's newsletter | NOVEMBER 21, 2025

Do This One Trick and Pay Down Your Mortgage in Half the Time.

These type of carousels pop up in my socials like clockwork.

"Pay off your 30-year mortgage in 15 years with this ONE SIMPLE TRICK!"

The one below has 80K likes and almost as many shares. The tip? Make an extra 1/6th payment mid-month. Boom. Half your mortgage timeline, gone.

I actually like these posts. I get a thrill reading them. So simple.

And it works! Making two extra payments per year will drop your mortgage balance like a rock. You'll own your home outright in 15 years and save a mountain of interest.

If you want to, do it. But I won't. Ask any financial planner and they'll likely tell you it's a bad move.

Here's why.

The Math Against It is Simpler Than the Math in Favor.

Your mortgage rate is probably hovering around 5-6% right now. When you make extra payments, you're essentially buying a guaranteed 5-6% return. Not bad.

Except the S&P 500 stock index has returned 13% annually over the past decade. Even zooming out to 30 years, through dot-com crashes, housing crises, and pandemics, we're still talking about 10% average returns.

That's literally double your money.

Here's the Catch.

Stock market investing is hard. The market can crater 30% in a month or not go up for a decade. Your bonus mortgage payment, on the other hand, gives you that dopamine hit of watching your balance shrink each month on your statement. It's guaranteed.

But besides that lousy comparative return, another reason not to do it, is it's very likely you will never pay off your house.

After all, the average homeowner in LA stays in their house for 18 years. You'll probably refinance when rates drop. Life happens: job changes, divorces, kids, parents getting older. That 30-year mortgage you're frantically trying to pay off? You probably won't even have it in 10 years.

By paying it down, you'll either get a little more money when you sell, or a slightly lower payment when you refinance it.

That's it.

Meanwhile, that money you didn't invest is gone forever. Not just the principal; the decades of compound growth.

Paid-Off Houses are Overrated.

Now, I've never met a homeowner who regretted paying off their house.

And a paid-off house sure makes retirement easier. A mortgage payment is most people's biggest expense, so that makes sense.

But what's the plan with paying down your house? You pay off your house and THEN start investing at 57?

Or you take that lump sum from your free-and-clear home sale and dump it into index funds right before retirement? And then live where?

The bottom line is a paid-off house isn't a retirement plan. It doesn't generate income. As that Rich Dad Poor Dad guy never stops reminding us, your house isn't an asset if you're living in it.

And as homeowners all know, it costs money to be in a house, paid off or not.

We all need income at 65, besides Social Security.

Sure, pay down your house if you want, but you have to invest. The same percentage of Americans own homes as own stocks—about two-thirds. But one group is building generational wealth while the other is just... paying off debt faster.