As often the case, people think backwards and do the opposite of what is most beneficial in the long term.
By aggressively paying off your mortgage you are actually giving up one of the best inflation hedges available to you. Inflation is you best friend when it comes to reducing debt.
Instead of paying off the mortgage if you are worried about inflation, a much better option would be to diversify your risk and further increase your inflation hedge by using your EF to invest in a solar PV system for your home.
I'm older at 51. I don't know if I will live another 10 or 25 years. So I have to be careful. I want there to be money for my heir if I die, so he can more easily afford utilities, groceries, property tax and homeowner's insurance.
Yeah it seems like solar panels for home would be a great investment because of the rising energy costs and the fact that the thing will proably pay for itself in 6 years. I figure it'd cost me around $10k for DIY .. 20 panels fo around 350w each.. Maybe if I am lucky and buy used 310w panels (or so) for $1000 I can build a system for $7k or less I dunno.
Can you explain the mortgage inflation hedge thing more? I do know that as inflation rises a lot.. I get a corresponding increase in income and fairly quickly the $40k mortgage balance will be a less significant number.
Nobody knows how much longer they have on this mortal coil, so you're in the same boat as the rest of us on that front, I'm afraid.
Inflation helps debt holders, especially holders of fixed rate debt, because over time it erodes the real value of the debt. That is why you have people who held mortgages through the 1970s and 80s come out the side with tiny mortgages as everything else went up.
And while it's true that there can be a squeeze in living standards during inflationary times which is what frightens mortgage holders, in general over long enough time wages will eventually catch up.
Mortgage rates today are deeply negative in real terms - actually, as negative as we have ever seen. That means your debt is being shrunk relative to everything else, including (eventually) wages and income, just by the act of everything else going up in price.
Holding a mortgage is one of the only practical means of shorting your own currency against its inevitable future depreciation. Don't be in a great hurry to give up that hedge, no matter how fuzzy inside having a paid off home may feel.
I have posted this article many times in the past, as I feel its the best such article I have ever read that explains all the pros and cons of paying off your mortgage:
https://financialmentor.com/investment-advice/pay-off-mortgage-early-or-invest/7478 - it is not a particularly new article (I think it's 10 years old), so pay great attention to when he starts talking about a mortgage being a hedge against inflationary monetary policy, and how potnential negative real borrowing rates mean that you are effectively being paid to borrow the money. Both these possibilities are now very much where we are today.