So I have roughly $5000 in student loans at 5% and about $65000 on my mortgage at 3.875% (5/1ARM). Should I put extra payments towards the student loan or the mortgage?
5% is higher, so if it's really a matter of playing off the higher interest rate that would be it, but it seems like the mortgage is a lot more "top-heavy" (not sure of the proper term) with most of the interest in the beginning and principle later on, so payments early on would have a bigger effect than later on.
Edit (originally a comment but felt it should be part of the question):
Paying the highest interest first seems to make the most intuitive sense, and that's what I hear the most, however when I plug in to interest calculators, it shows that on the 5% student loan I'll be paying $1000 in interest making min payments, so hypothetically if I pay that off right now in one lump sum I'd be saving about $1000. On the other hand, if I instead take that amount of put it towards my mortgage, the calculator for that shows I'd save $10,000 in interest over min payment (over the lifetime of the loan).
Am I missing something?