This genuinely depends on your goals and risk tolerance, and it helps to separate two questions: paying the mortgage down faster, and pulling equity out. On paying it down, the honest test is whether you are confident you can earn a better return with that money elsewhere. If you actively invest, in retirement accounts, other real estate, and so on, and you expect a solid return, keeping the mortgage and investing the difference can make sense, because your rate is a low hurdle to beat. If you are not actually investing the surplus, paying the mortgage down is a perfectly reasonable default. Paying it down is a guaranteed return equal to your rate, and it buys freedom. To put it personally, Josh directs extra toward his own mortgage each month with a goal of owning it free and clear by 60, treating the payoff as a long-term freedom target rather than something urgent. On using the home as an ATM through a cash-out refinance, be more careful. Giving up a very low existing rate to pull cash out, say refinancing from an illustrative 3% up to an illustrative 6%, only makes sense if you have a genuinely strong use for the money, such as a down payment on another property you could not otherwise buy. Raising the rate on your entire balance to free up cash is expensive, so the alternative use has to clearly justify the cost. Either path can be right. Make the choice deliberately, with the real numbers side by side, and pick the one you can sleep with.