Prepay the home loan or keep investing?

Summary: A Rs 1.76 crore home loan changes how you think about money. Should you prepay aggressively or keep investing? The maths looks simple. The reality isn’t. At 38, Rohan is making the biggest financial commitment of his life. He is buying a home in Bengaluru worth Rs 2.20 crore and has taken a home loan of Rs 1.76 crore. The EMI fits within his income, but the sheer size of the loan has made him pause and rethink how he should manage his savings going forward. Until now, Rohan invested Rs 1.5 lakh a month through SIPs for long-term goals. With the home loan in place, he plans to cut this to Rs 50,000 a month. He also expects annual bonuses and lumpsums of around Rs 5 lakh a year. What troubles him is not affordability, but direction. Should he aggressively prepay the loan and become debt-free early? Should he continue investing and let the loan run its course? Or is there a middle path? Why this decision feels harder than it should The home loan versus investing debate has always existed. What has changed is how intensely it is now analysed. On one side is modern optimisation thinking, which compares home loan interest rates with long-term equity returns and suggests investing instead of prepaying. On the other is traditional wisdom that prioritises eliminating debt as early as possible, often without considering opportunity costs. Both views make sense in isolation

This article was originally published on February 20, 2026.