Prepayment Penalty for Loans vs. Current Interest Earnings

Am I overlooking something? You're supposed to always pay off as much as possible, right? The monthly interest amount to the bank will then also be higher. And you can only change the repayment rate 3 times

Sure, if you feel comfortable with it? It would definitely be more economical if the interest rate is so much higher than the loan. But for many, it is an emotional "weight off the leg" when it is paid off.

After the fixed interest period, we also have a relatively high remaining debt of over 200k. We calculated various scenarios for the time after my parental leave on how to use monthly surplus to be done faster. The "golden goal" would be to be debt-free after 20 years. In the calculations, we went through various scenarios of special repayments and alternative forms of investments. And the difference only became really clear to us on paper. If we were to make special repayments on our (still relatively cheap) loan, we would be on the safe side. But instead, we are now investing most of it in MSCI World ETF. The average return would amount to such a high five-figure sum that you would otherwise just be giving away. Even if the market performs significantly worse in the next 20 years than in the past 50, we would still be leaving a lot of money on the table in the long term if we "just made special repayments". Maybe in the long term we will pursue a hybrid solution where we also make special repayments. But we have already started to invest the calculated amount monthly into an ETF, which, over 20 years with average development, would almost have us debt-free. No risk, no fun.

I simply see the problem in that you need the money at a very specific time. My MSCI World is currently in the red. If I had to repay the loan right now, that would be bad. (...)