The impulse to pay off your mortgage more quickly than you need to is understandable, especially these days.
Interest rates are near historic lows, so it's possible to replace a 30-year mortgage with a 15-year loan and still afford the monthly payments. Or, if you've already refinanced at a dirt cheap rate, you can take those savings and pay down your principal faster.
But the allure is more emotional than financial. Mortgage debt provides great financial flexibility, and paying it down fast probably isn't the best way to grow your nest egg.
"Generally speaking, there's no advantage to paying down a mortgage earlier than you need to," says Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com
That's because the interest on mortgages is low, it helps lower your taxes, and paying less every month gives you chance to reinvest the savings in more productive ways. Among the better options: paying down higher-interest credit cards, or saving for retirement.
The one aspect that this author and most others fail to recognize is inflation; the invisible tax. Inflation is a method by which the Fed enables the Treasury to increase revenues without generating additional liabilities. At least, not for which the government is accountable.
Inflation relative to financed debt works like this; when you finance a purchase (with fixed interest) over many years like a mortgage, you begin with a fixed monthly payment, say $1,000. Your initial payments are dollars at 100% value. By the end of, say a 30 year loan, you are paying your lender with dollars worth less. You are in effect being given a discount (as long as you are earning more relative to the rate of inflation) by the Fed and Treasury.
The author goes on to present factors like tax breaks and savings, but inflation is apparently the invisible elephant in the room. You can't see it, but you know it's there. You can smell it.
Start with rates on 30-year mortgages. The average rate is 3.66 percent, close to the lowest level since the 1950s.
But in reality you pay an even lower rate when factoring in tax breaks. The federal government gives borrowers a break by allowing them to deduct mortgage interest from their income. And if instead of using the extra cash to pay down your mortgage you put it in a tax-advantaged retirement fund like a 401(k), your taxes are reduced even further.
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