<p>POIH … we are paying off our mortgage ahead of time but with a slighty different strategy. We also are very consevative financially so each month we have some extra cash … and we decide how to “invest” this extra cash. One of the big drivers was what to we believe the relative rate of return for various investment vehicles will be over the next year or so. Our mortgage is at roughly 5% and when the market was booming and average 10+% then, even after tax, investing any extra cash flow in the market made sense (there was another decision about open, retirrement, or 529 acconts though). However when the market is not doing well and the 5% mortgage rate is greater than our expected return (your 2% CDs for example) then we paid down the mortgage a bit with the extra cash flow. All this analysis occured after we had our emergency funds tucked away so the situation sounds very similar to yours … we just approached it in a more incremental way. BTW - what was very similar is we did the same analysis around one time inflows like bonuses or gifts from parents which were often applied to the mortgage. For me if we could pay off our mortgage near the time when our oldest started college that would be terrific from a cash flow standpoint … the old mortgage payment would make a pretty big dent in the college bill we will be paying without changing our cash flow or budget.</p>