and you won't have to worry about making mortgage payments.

Tax implications if there is no deduction. Better off checking with a tax,expert.

I was able to retire without any debt, which was a big deal.

feeling of satisfaction that comes with paying off a mortgage? If not, you might enjoy it.

Then the house burned down. I took $50,000 out 5 years ago to re-roof, add solar back-up, paint, new deck railing, and improve the driveway. And I could wipe out the mortgage by draining a significant part of my current investments.

I'd pay it off for the very reasons you state.

My buddy here had a windfall inheritance a few years ago, it included property in another state and was a suitable chunk of change. He paid off his mortgage and has been feeling good about it since he was able to do it two years before he retired. I think it was a wise decision.

I'd pay it off in a heartbeat if the funds were available and there was enough to live on afterward ...or even close.

But I lose tax benefits w/o a mortgage...so I'll be checking this out now.

Definitely something to weigh out.

As there is a SALT cap on State Taxes and Property Taxes, I'm not sure about the interest part but it sort of depends on your tax bracket. A lot of the old middle class tax breaks were effectively eviscerated by the 2017 Trump Tax cuts. And they eliminated the deduct-ability of Home Equity Loan Interest too.

but that's because you're paying much more in interest to the mortgage companies/banks. In the long term, you pay way more $ if you keep your mortgage, tax deduction or not. On the other hand, if your interest rate is very low like 3%, it might be worth keeping the mortgage for a while longer so you don't deplete your savings, but pay it off more quickly if possible and keeping some savings.

But overall, paying off the full loan as soon as possible can make a big difference - to your bottom line and to your state of mind.

Tariffs and $86 Billion for deportation planned, so that's logical.

Depends on your mortgage.

We may all lose purchasing power in one way or another, guessing more for frivolous things like food, electricity, medical care and prescription drugs as profits spin out of control.

But we'll have AI to help fill in unemployment claims.

money markets? it will take a long time to earn the $80K back. at least if you have to sell the house u keep all the money for that. no tax on an owner occupied house if youve lived there long enough.

If it's almost nothing, the investment might be better.

If you have 30 years to go, pay the mortgage.

I did it in 2012 and it's saved me thousands on interest payment. Gave me a lot more disposable cash every month. A friend did the same thing last year, and she's thrilled that she no longer has that monthly obligation.

If it's a new mortgage and its rate is higher than what you're earning on the investment, pay off the mortgage (or at least as much as you can.) On the other hand, if your mortgage is over half paid off, most of the interest has already been paid and you may be better off leaving your money in your other interest-bearing investment(s.)

It took a great weight off my shoulders. It didn’t do anything to my credit rating. My wife had a better credit score, so she was able to get a card. She passed away, but my name was also on her card. So I am using her card even though she has passed on.so I’m stuck with an LL Bean card.

Could be worse.

Don't know anything about their credit cards, though...

Took it out 5 years ago. Pretty low interest rate.

You'll do better with relatively safe investments, my savings (54 yo retiring next year so needing to limit exposure as I'm going to chew through this until I get to pension age) is about 5/6 in bonds, CDs, and treasury funds right now. My mortgage is also low (2.25).

The road ahead isn't going to be normal. Just not having to worry about your financial situation might be worth anything you might gain by investing. Tangible assets seem as practical as they have been in decades.

I listened when Trump insisted he didn't need the votes, he already had all the votes he needed.

Thanks for commenting!

If inflation spikes, holding a fixed-interest loan is like watching water evaporate in the desert: the loan still pays off according to it's predetermined schedule using nominal dollars, but each of those dollars gets easier and easier to earn via inflated prices (if you're still working).

High inflation usually causes the Fed to jack up interest rates, which makes business reluctant to invest in additional productive capacity. In short, most businesses will tank to some extent if Trump follows through on the plans he expressed in his campaign.

Commodities are a large part of how inflation is determined. I therefore expect commodities to roughly track inflation.

The fact that any of Trump's loans (I mean, he's called himself "The King of Debt&quot that are fixed-interest will effectively melt away if he drives up inflation pretty much tells me how he'd like inflation to behave.

When I asked our financial guy about doing it, he said that as we had the cash and if paying it off made us more comfortable, we should probably do it.
It was a good decision and the 50K it cost was money well spent. It reduced our monthly expenses at a time when our business was in a slump.

1. You subtract yourself from the volatility of the markets and workers troubles that are ahead of us.
2. You will feel relieved every day to be able to live debtfree.
3. If you play it wisely, every month you put the sum of your mortgage monthlies on your savings account and you will have one nice nest egg in no time to invest in anything you want (we invested in renewable and isolation, further reducing our monthly dues)

Just an idea

Actively reinvesting the money via automatic transfers goes a long way. Also, something might come up in the future that might make the money to pay off the mortgage unavailable.

Got a problem with the core idea right now. My bank stopped allowing Acorns to round off purchases to the nearest dollar, accumulate to $5.00 and automatically invest that money in market funds that I choose. Still transfer $400/mo into Acorns and now have $25K there. I like it because it is available, 100%, when I decide to move it back into my bank account. I set it up as a painless way to pay the property taxes, but now I just let it grow. Pretty much mirrors my investment results with my primary investment portfolio that is managed by a guy I've know for 60 years.

No matter what, I always have a house.

what is going to happen." It was the same type of economic turmoil and uncertainty.

The mortgage was about $140k. We still smile when we talk about "I'm glad we did it."

It is one less cloud in the back of our minds. I am now 82 and we are both retired with a defined benefit pensions and SS.

There ain't no Beemer in the driveway and we don't have a second house in Aspen but we sleep good at night.

No regrets. Live on my 50 acres with the Skippa and manage it as best I can.

If you want peace and quiet, this is the place to be.

after they graduated from college. They were setting up and some local yahoo comes up to them with a shotgun. He had Nancy tie Greg to a tree and then shot Greg, leaving with a threat that they should get out. Greg was wounded and survived.

Next, the dumbass drove into town and told towns people how he took care of the "hippies" and they won't be back. The neighbors reported this to the police. Nancy got Greg to hospital where the gunshot wounds were reported to police.

Idiot served time but I don't know how much. Greg & Nancy, a few years later, bought a farmhouse in another part of Stetson. I lost track of them around 30 years ago.

My family had a small cabin at Balch Pond, on the N.H. border. We kept it for years and then sold it to pay for kid's tuition. Later, I bought a condo in Wells Beach and kept it for 10 years.

I miss Maine but it is a long drive from N.J. to Maine so I haven't been for about 10 years.

I did have locals come up and tell me, "your not from around here, are you?" Truth. Still voted for what was right for the environment.

I'm glad it is working out for you.

I'm glad it is working out for you.

I was remembering.... the coldest I experienced was at the house in mid winter. It was 40 below, when I had to go to the outhouse to take a pee. It was in the middle of the night and it was quiet. I wanted to experience that cold and solitude.

They had a horse - colt, about a year old. The horse saw me, jumped over the fence and came galloping to me..... FAST. I was scared shitless. (I almost forgot I had to pee and would have peed myself but I was too scared to even do that).

The horse came to me and abruptly stopped. It wanted me to pet it or was looking for food or whatever.

Anyway, that was the most scared I can ever remember being in my life.

I had my second woodstove in the cellar up and operational. Downside of a full exposure to the western mountains of Maine - the Bigelow Mountain Range - , 60 miles SW.

securities? At 3.5% I would keep the mortgage and keep the investments. If you're close to retirement age, what you're suggesting might make more sense.

Still sorta working, collecting a modest paycheck and SS. That takes care of my day-to-day living expenses, not an issue, It boils down to tax advantage to keep mortgage vs paying off with the CD's I have that will cover 95% of the outstanding mortgage. Will chack my TY 2023 Mortgage deduction tomorrow, when I'm sober .

Investments at this point. My dad took and moved all his equities to a fixed income annuity. Long term I'll still bet on the stock market but trump could crash it for a few years i think.

pay your mortgage off or down with the rest.

I had to take early retirement because my job was being shipped to Atlanta, where I very much did not want to live. I had enough money from an inheritance to pay off the mortgage, which then made it possible for me to retire without worrying about that big debt. Depends on your circumstances but if you're near retirement it's a good move. Also, if you're over 65 you don't have to pay a capital gains tax when selling your mortgage-free house if you want or need to do that.

They avoid paying capital gains on the property value, I think.

If you're for it, if you like to buy dead horses, then by all means, sock the money away in the money market account, and keep buying dead horses (i.e., paying mortgage interest.) OTOH, if you don't like to buy dead horses, pay down the mortgage. It has never made sense to me why anybody would NOT pay down a debt, for which they are paying interest for which they have nothing to show (there's them dead horses again!), when they have the money to do it.

Last year, I bought a new car, and got a six-year loan at 8.6% interest. If I had paid it on the schedule, it would cost me $12,000 in interest/dead horses. I paid it off in 9 months, and SAVED $10,000, which stayed in MY pocket, as opposed to being a blip in the bank's earnings. It looks a heckuva lot better in MY pocket. I think you'll reach the same conclusion if you take the "live-horse" approach, and pay it off.

Pay off or hold? I'm leaning toward paying off and using the monthly cash for the mortgage to reinvest.

Because I know so little about money I'm gratified to see I agree with your decision.

you probably don't have 15 year CDs. Rates are dropping and renewing CDs might only get 4%. Being able to predict future interest rates would help make the financial decision.

Do you itemized your deductions? If so, the home mortgage interest deduction would save you income taxes at your highest marginal tax rate, plus State Income taxes if you live in a state that has one.

If you pay off your mortgage, would you still have savings for an emergency?

A question always, always raises other questions.

Hope this helps.

Paid off mine and no debt when I retired early. That was 22 years ago. After selling that house, I paid cash for the next one.

Economic opportunity cost basically is what is the cost of your decision. You have a binary decision to make; to pay off the mortgage or to invest the money. Please note, each person's situation is different and one solution doesn't solve everyone's problem. I know it feels good and it's the "American way" to have a mortgage paid off but it doesn't always have to be that way.

You have two choices to choose from. If you pay off the mortgage, you'll be saving the monthly payments which you could invest in the markets but you'll no longer have $80,000. If you invest in the market, your investment could grow considerably. So the question comes down to what is the cost of paying off the mortgage versus investing the $80,000.

Option 1: Paying off the mortgage
I don't know what your monthly payments are but let's say it's $1,500 per month or $18,000 a year. If you pay off the mortgage it would take you 4.4 years ($80,000/$18,000 = 4.4) to recoup your $80,000.

Option 2: Invest the money
Use the Rule of 72 to determine how long it will take to double your investment. The Rule of 72 is to divide the interest rate into 72 and the result is the number of years it will take to double. If you invested the $80,000 in the market with an expected conservative return of 8%, it would take you 9 years (72/8 = 9) to double your money. In 9 years, your $80,000 would, theoretically, double and grow to $160,000.

So what you need to consider is what are your current and projected needs over the next 10 years are? If you don't need the money from paying off the mortgage then invest the money in the markets. Word of warning: there are risks in markets and they are not guaranteed to continue rising and you could lose or make money.

What you'll need to do is to sit down and do the math on both options and choose which one is best for you.

That or pay to refinance which seemed stupid since we had the cash. We immediately started saving our monthly house payment & still do.

Good luck, whatever you do! Pretty sure we're in for a bumpy ride.

One less hassle out of the way.

but my financial advisor talked me out of it, said I would take too big a hit on income tax if I took that much money out of my IRA. So I am retired, still making house payments. And home equity loan payments. And truck payments. But, we are getting by, so far.

the interest you pay on the mortgage. Then use some of the gains from the money Market to make additional payments. If the Money Market moves to less than the mortgage interest, sell it and pay off the mortgage.

Let's say your mortgage is 3% interest and your MM pays 5%. Three percent goes towards additional payments and the rest reinvested in the MM or used to buy more equities.

You more quickly pay down your mortgage and, at the same time, get more money in income.

If you can't make as much as the mortgage interest at some time because interest rates drip, then the money is there to pay off the mortgage as that "earns" you more than holding on to the MM.

Annually, review how much you owe to pay off the mortgage and transfer the excess from your MM to other securities.

NOTE: Unlike CDs and other interest bearing accounts, MMs are like equities in that the "interest" is considered "dividends" and dividends held over 1 year are taxed at only half their amount so make sure that any withdrawals are set to be FILO (first in last out) so that the payouts are coming from the fully taxable shares and not the ones taxed at half the amount. Many investment companies set payouts to be FIFO so the older ones are sold and taxed less but in your case, you are always taking money out monthly so FILO is best.

they are ordinary income for taxation purposes.