Have you ever heard of the phrase, “it takes money to make money”? To a large extent, this is true as you reap higher returns from larger investments. And so, given that many of us lack the capital to enter into larger investments, we may be tempted to borrow money to make up the shortfall.

While not particularly intuitive to the layman borrower, prepayment penalties seek to prevent you from clearing your debt early. Many of us figure that our creditors would be happy to receive our money earlier, but this is not the case due to a decrease in interest payment owed.