I should have pointed out, too, that we owe very little on the mortgage.  Both of us owned our residences before we got married, so by selling two places and buying one, it helped us out a ton on the equity front.

I’m a little older, and that also helps.  :)  I bought my first house in 1994 for $152,000, so the mortgage was small by today’s standards.  I paid it off aggressively from 1994 to 2001, and I used to love looking at the amortization tables and seeing how making an extra month’s payment would take three or four months off the end of the mortgage.  Not to mention how much interest I was denying the bank by doing so!

Now, when I make an extra weekly payment… it only takes a week off the mortgage.  The amount and the interest rate are so small that the effects of compound interest aren’t as large as they normally are.  I agree that for anyone who isn’t in the last few years of paying off their mortgage, or don’t have a variable rate, paying it down is definitely the way to go.