I have clients ask me on a regular basis if it makes sense these days to try and pay off their mortgage early. I guess for some people it might make sense. It’s certainly better than spending any excess money you have every month. However, with today's historically low, rock bottom interest rates it really makes very little sense to try and pay more than your regular monthly, or what I recommend bi-weekly mortgage payment.
Keep in mind by switching to a simple bi-weekly payment schedule you will already be reducing the standard amortization from 25 years down to about 23 years. Trying to accelerate it more by making extra payments makes very little sense when you have a 2.3% mortgage rate. You would be much better off investing that money in, say a company like Bell Canada, collecting that 5% dividend yield every quarter and taking advantage of the Canadian dividend tax credit where it’s taxed at a very favourable rate.
When interest rates get back up over 5 or 5.5% then you may want to consider making some extra mortgage payments to pay down that mortgage early. Until then you would be far better off investing that excess money in some high quality Canadian dividend stocks.