The "peace of mind" argument only works *after* you pay off the mortgage *in full* (or close to it). If you're trying to gradually reduce it from 30 years to 15 years, and you lose your job in year 7, the accumulated investments could actually give you more of a runway to keep paying and find a new job, than if you had no liquidity and still a large (despite being smaller than otherwise) debt.
Agreed. Very good point. Alternatively you can stretch out the term of your smaller mortgage to reduce your fixed costs in response. On paper, makes sense to invest. But I think for a portion of people, the difficulty is discipline to invest rather than allow lifestyle inflation to creep at the cost of investing.
The "peace of mind" argument only works *after* you pay off the mortgage *in full* (or close to it). If you're trying to gradually reduce it from 30 years to 15 years, and you lose your job in year 7, the accumulated investments could actually give you more of a runway to keep paying and find a new job, than if you had no liquidity and still a large (despite being smaller than otherwise) debt.
Agreed. Very good point.
Alternatively you can stretch out the term of your smaller mortgage to reduce your fixed costs in response.
On paper, makes sense to invest. But I think for a portion of people, the difficulty is discipline to invest rather than allow lifestyle inflation to creep at the cost of investing.