<prompt> Human: We have 250k in the bank, 60k invested in mutual funds, and 60k in 401k. We owe 165k on a mortgage at 4.1. Our monthly payment is about 1,080 and about 600 of that is interest money we are simply throwing away every month.Would it be smart to use money in our savings to pay off the mortgage, thus ending our 600month interest hemorrhage? We are planning on staying in this house for another 10 years, and the house itself was a good purchase bought on short sale during housing bubble burst, its worth more now than we bought it for.Assistant: First, why do you have 250k in the bank? If you dont plan to invest that money, just pay off your mortgage today. If you plan to invest the money, it is likely better to invest it but there is no one size fits all answer to this question.Human: Well, because everywhere I read it is drilled into my head, over and over, to keep emergency funds in the bank. We came into some money and have just been sitting on it for a couple years rather than blow it on cocaine and hookers.  <response>: Your emergency fund should total six months to a year of expenses probably on the order of 15k for you, not the total price of your house. :At 4.1, you can probably do better investing it than paying your mortgage down early; that involves taking on a degree of short-term risk however. If you can stand seeing that temporarily drop by up to a third, invest it; if not, pay off your mortgage and quit wasting money on interest. Either way, definitely dont sit on such a huge pile of cash. Do something with it! 