Thanks for the feedback.
Sorry for the confusion. Let me recap the situation.
Primary 30-year mortgage is 4.25%
Secondary 15-year mortgage is 7.99%
Current LTV is just over 50%
Why the second is so high, I don't know. It was just the package the mortgage dealer came up with to avoid PMI.
It was totally unnecessary though, I would only have ended up paying PMI for 12-18 months.
Yes, I guess I would get a nice amount of money if I sold now, but the buying and selling processes themselves are expensive, so I want to minimize the number of times I do that in my life.
At the time of purchase, I was still working as an employee. The house was 3.7 times my salary.
Currently, the remainder of the loan is less than 2 times my gross. The value is just under 4 times my gross.
The posts I read recently were not discussing details like PMI and second mortgages.
This is the first post I read:
http://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/29/why-your-house-is-a-terrible-investment/Which caused me to do a Google search, and then I read this post:
https://investorjunkie.com/13979/fool-prepay-mortgage/And a few others saying virtually the same thing.
So, here is my dilemma.
To me, refinancing the two mortgages into one does not eliminate the high interest debt. It is just sweeping it under the rug.
For at least this, I want to finish paying it off.
However, I am a man of numbers and logic, and according to these posts, I already have too much equity in my house.
I do not want to make the emotional feel-good decision. I am very comfortable with high levels of calculated risk.
However, I do not agree with overextending leverage. That isn't risk; that is an accident waiting to happen.
So, if this is the case, as much as I don't like changing directions in the middle of something, I will stop paying the second mortgage and start building up the retirement accounts.
Also, if I end up agreeing with the argument that 30-year is better while investing the difference, would it really be worth the closing costs just to change from 4.25 to 3.5-3.75?
As I said before, I felt the 15-year refinance was worth the closing costs because of the dramatic and immediate difference in absolute interest dollars spent every month.
Actual situation right now:
I was planning on paying another 4 K to the second mortgage next week.
September was a good month (variable income), so next month is going to be 10K.
Then, probably another 4-5 K in December.
At that point, the remaining 24 K as of right now will be paid off either during January or February.
However, after reading these posts, my confusion and concern is if I should direct these funds towards retirement investment accounts?
Note: My retirement investment accounts as of right now are nearly zero.
The past few years have been a focus on recovering from my layoff and building up my freelance business.
This year's focus has been on eliminating debt and building up a very slight emergency fund.
The rest of the emergency fund was to be resolved by also establishing a HELOC when I refinanced the mortgage.
Next and subsequent years' focus will obviously be just building up the stash.
I hope this helps with clarity!
I certainly wrote that first post while feeling a bit overwhelmed.