How do you account for your mortgage payment in your savings rate, given that the proportion of the payment that goes to interest vs principal changes over time?
I see a lot people say that you should claim the principal portion of your payment as savings and the interest portion of your payment as an expense, but that would mean that over time, without making any changes to your behavior at all, your savings rate would go up.
The implication then is that two people who are in otherwise identical situations (equal income, taxes, retirement contributions, mortgage, expenses, etc.) except that one is near the beginning of their mortgage (payment is mostly interest) and one is near the end (payment is mostly principal) would have different savings rates. Is this a problem? Does it decrease the meaningfulness of your savings rate? How do you account for it?
