Mortgages are low-interest money. Plus, historically, property values rise faster than inflation rates. So, in another sense, it makes no sense to pay off mortgages early, unless you know you're going to stay in that home at least until it is paid off. There are no loans available to anyone with interest rates as low as a mortgage.

I say that from a position of having no mortgage on my home. I paid it off on the day I closed on it, from the profits of the house I owned before, which I paid off from the house I owned before that. I keep my houses until it need to sell them for some other reason. This last time, I downsized, so the effect of rising home prices had an even greater effect.

For most people, a mortgage is essential to their investment in their home as a real estate investment. They cannot buy it outright at the beginning. What makes no sense is having credit card debt and paying down your home's mortgage by paying on the principal. You're far better off paying off a car loan in such a case or paying down credit card debt.

Homes are investments made with the expectation that the value of the home will increase faster than inflation. In most case, that is true, if you can wait long enough to sell.

It kinda makes sense to get a 50 yr mortgage. It's not like I'm gonna be able to pay it off, and yes, it's a cheap loan comparatively. Added bonus...maybe the bank will keep me alive until they get their money back.

(don't want to debate the matter, just my humorous take)

…it would be nice to have one paid off home to camp out in. I imagine in a collapse the banks will become angry monsters/ mobsters. And the question remains, how real estate taxes would be calculated should a collapse happen.

to manage paying off a house. It takes a long, long time, in most cases.

I bought my first house in California with a $20,000 loan from my father-in-law. That was in 1974, and it was the least expensive house in the town where I lived. Rundown, too, but I fixed it over the years. I stayed in that house for 30 years. My wife and I paid it off in just 10 years, even on our miniscule earnings. Finally, my next wife and I needed to move to Minnesota to help care for her aging parents. I got the house when I divorced, but had to give my ex-wife the $100,000 we had stashed away to balance things up. My second wife and I lived there for 17 years.

So, when my second wife and I sold that house, inflation in that market in California meant that it sold for $337K. A good part of that went to buy a fixer-upper in Minnesota. The thing is that I fix up my old houses myself. I have the skills, fortunately. A few years ago, we sold that house and bought another one as we downsized. So, that first house was the only house I had a mortgage on. The rest were bought with the increased value over time. But, I had to pay off the first one to make that happen.

So, time is the secret. Time and a plan.

In the early eighties we managed to get a 15 year mortgage. While things were tight for a while the timeline kept the spirits a little higher! A 50 year mortgage as T is proposing is madness. With the interest, upkeep and taxes I don’t see that being feasible. Better to live on a boat or a commune with friends. 🤣😂

That's the key.

three years ago. I would have to live to 84 to pay it off. I doubt I will make that age.

Most people don't.

will say I hate moving so intend to at least begin retirement at this house.

The worst was our move from California to Minnesota. We moved before finding a new house there, so storage was going to be a problem. Cost, too. So, what I did was buy a 24' moving van from UHaul. After having it thoroughly checked out and minor repairs done, I took a month to slowly load everything we moved into that van. When we drove away from our home and office in California, it was packed full from side to side, top to bottom and front to back. It weighed only 400 lb. under the maximum GVW for that truck.

I drove the truck and my wife drove our minivan. We took six days to go 2500 miles. Then, we stayed in her parents house for a month, with the truck full of our worldly possessions stored in a truck storage yard. A month after we arrived, we closed on our new house, got the truck and hired movers to unload it into the new digs. Then, I sold the truck for only a little less than I paid for it. Good deal all around.

I had lived in the California house for 35 years. When we sold the new house in Minnesota to buy a different, smaller one, we had lived there for 13 years. I don't think we'll move from our current one at all. So, yes, I hate moving!

Floating along on 28% credit card debt to more quickly pay of 3.6% money makes no sense. Even if the mortgage is 6%, it still makes no sense.

It's fine to pay down mortgage principal if you can without taking on other debt. That's smart.

I received this same advice when I bought my house in'85. I never did any calculations to see how much we saved, but we, pretty routinely, made one extra mortgage payment a year. After my partner died, I had to refinance to a much lower payment... but those earlier, extra payments saved me a boatload.

i had a mortgage on a 2flat that i got in my divorce. as long as i had tenants, i made extra payments. usually $500. i was in the middle of a big remodel when the plague hit, and ended up w no rents for 2 yrs. i only asked for a 1 mo abatement, but was given a yr. so i took it.
after it was over, i had to sell another property to dig out of the hole. those extra payments got eaten up. but it did make it possible for me to pay off the mortgage w the proceeds of the sale. almost made up for the loss of rents on the property i sold.

We managed to pay off our 30 year mortgage in 18 yrs. by just making a little extra on each payment. Not much most of the time but it adds up faster than you would think...

tax refunds, bonuses, anything that isnt part of the monthly budget, put at least half of it on the house.
you’ll b so glad u did.

and u dont have to wait til the end to collect. if rates r good, u can refi and lower your payment.

and not many investments will beat more equity in your home. pay whatever the principle amount is in the early yrs and it becomes a double payment.
if rates go down and u refi, your payment will go waaay down.

but i’m not advocating that ppl have no savings. where did i say that?

for most ppl, the biggest and sometimes only, investment they have is their home. the biggest expense is the interest. cutting into that is just math. simple math.
re- equity loans- the more equity u have, over and above what u r borrowing, the cheaper they r. again, simple math.

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Mortgages are difficult when working an uncertain trade job where there's both a month or so period of overtime (yay!) and a couple weeks to a month of unemployment every year or two.
Taking in rent mates helps a bit, but not as much as it seems, because most of the time they're also trying to save up money to be able to dig themselves out of a hole, and a lot of their rent ends up being housekeeping during the OT times.

... crumbles under mountains of medical bills and fights with health insurance companies.

One of the scariest times in my life was when my wife's COBRA plan timed out in the midst of her chemo. We were both otherwise uninsurable, I was self employed, my wife's pharmacy bills were over a thousand dollars a week, and we were days from foreclosure. Needless to say, I wasn't paying the bills on our maxed out credit cards and the interest rates shot up to 30% plus. (Read the fine print.)

At the last possible minute my wife was accepted to our state's "high risk" insurance pool so she didn't have to interrupt her treatment and we begged enough money from family to bring our mortgage current, money they couldn't comfortably spare. Immediately our mortgage was sold at a discount to some vulture company that bets against the success of people in our circumstances, friendly on the surface, making money selling the homes of people who don't make it for a profit.

My wife recovered and we've not suffered any medical crisis so severe since, but that's when I stopped giving a shit about credit or credit ratings. Most of the financial wreckage from that time has been cleaned up but I never want to borrow money again.

This experience has also made me a hardcore socialist. In a truly civilized society everyone has a secure comfortable home, healthy food to eat, clean water, educational opportunities, and good health care regardless of their circumstances.

We are not a civilized society.

you are saving the interest that would of accrued on that $50. For the life of the loan that really adds up

Say your mortgage is $1000 per month on a 30 year loan. Now pay $500 every two weeks instead of $1000 per month. Your mortgage will be paid off in 18 years instead of 30. Be sure you have a loan that allows this. The reason this works is that there are 26 payment (one extra month worth) and a lot of paid two weeks early which drops off payments at the end of the loan.
-Airplane

i guess it depends on how u get paid. if u get paid weekly/biweekly, it makes sense.
monthly/semi-monthly, not so much.

Or it will not be dedicated to that and it will be wasteful. Not only does it shorten the loan time, it shortens the amount of interest, so it saves you a lot of money. We paid our 30 year mortgage in 12 years!

yeah, i can imagine slimy banks blurring that.