Ahh, here's the rub. It seems like that, but what I learned from that podcast I linked to, is, doing so means your money isn't doing anything for you.
If you dump the extra into paying the mortgage off faster, then you have paid your mortgage off faster but you've got nothing at the end. You essentially have to start your finances over again. We got our mortgage in 2018 meaning we've paid off 7 years of our mortgage. Our mortgage is a 25 year mortgage that means we've got 18 years left.
I'm 50 this year meaning in 18 years I'll be 68, hopefully 3 years into my retirement. Assuming everything is going good and nothing major has changed, if I dump the left over into the mortgage I might be able to knock say 5 years off my mortgage. In that 5 years to me being 68 I'll make roughly $240,000 by not paying my mortgage.
However, by adding the $71 now, by the time I'm 68, and not counting for compound, I'll have $66,746. Now on the surface it seems like I'm still better off by having paid off the mortgage quicker right?
What happens in that period before the mortgage is paid off? By putting the money I've saved from the rate change I've got money I can use if I need to. If I dump in into the mortgage to pay it off faster, I've got nothing if something goes wrong. I'm more likely to need to take some other sort of loan out to pay for that need, then I'm in a worse position.
I could take that money I saved from the rate change and put it into investments. Theoretically, if I learn how to trade better I could potentially make far more than the $240,000 I would get from having the money going back into the mortgage.
Well.. True to all of that :D
But, your expenses will also drop massively when you have paid off your mortgage though :D
Depending on the compound interest you can get, it might be more worth it to do that, also, I get why you would do that in that stage or your life. :D