These discussions sound a lot like the mortgage pay off discussions.

Yes, they do indeed. That's another financially dubious thing that has become so popular among people who are not fully educated about their finances. And that one (making early mortgage payments) also adds a substantial amount of risk to one's financial life. It's been discussed ad nauseam, so no need to repeat it all here, but basically if you have a mortgage payment of $2000/mo, and you have an extra $500/mo to make extra principal payments, it it NOT a good idea to do so. It is better to save that extra $500 and invest it, then, once you have enough to pay off the entire mortgage it may or may not be a good idea to do so (that depends on interest rates and your expectations for the future). But paying $500 as an extra principal payment is terribly risky, let's say you've done that for 5 years, so 5 x 12 x $500 = $30,000 extra principal paid to the bank (and surely that'll reduce your mortgage length from 30 years to perhaps 25 years or whatever). Suddenly after those 5 years, bad times come along, you are laid off, there's no new jobs, unemployment is increasing, and then the problems really come, your wife is pregnant with your 3rd kid and suddenly she is also laid off. You spend down your emergency fund (a prudent 6 months) and come the next month, you don't have $2000 to pay the mortgage!!!! Now what? But you prepaid $30,000 of principal, maybe the bank will give you a break ... NO THEY WON'T. You owe them $2000 a month, and if you miss the payment, after a few months they will foreclose. Now if you went the other way, and didn't make those $500 extra principal payments each month for 5 years, you would have $30,000 plus interest or gains in that "house payoff" account. That $30,000, maybe even $50,000 by now could cover those mortgage payments for a heck of a long time, 25 months! As you can easily see, it is extremely risky to make additional principal payments. That's because the bank gives you nothing of current value in return, while you are reducing their risk and increasing your own risk.