Two Points:
1. Paying the mortgage down versus investing that money is not a sound argument. For one, If I know I will have a mortgage forever, my spending will increase. Part of the reason my spending is so low currently is because I want my mortgage gone so badly.
2. My goal in life is not to amass as much money as possible so that I can be financially independent. My goal in life is to get this monkey (mortgage) off my back so that I may start living, my young years, in the moment. Explore options that I cannot explore by having a set monthly payment.
I guess I don't understand. If your goal is #2, then #1 doesn't make sense. You should want to keep the mortgage, keep your spending low, AND keep working full-time so that you can put as much money as possible into savings. Then once you've saved 25 times your annual spending, you can quit your job and be free.
Otherwise you can just come up with a middle ground...my wife and I are NOT mustachian. We drive new cars, have shopping budgets for each of us, we eat out all the time, and we have a rather large vacation budget. But we rarely pay full price for anything and try to save money wherever possible on the things we want. With that said, we are still saving nearly 40% of our income. My estimates are that within the next 3-4 years after paying off a business loan and a few more pay raises, we will be saving over 50% of our income. So if we can save over 50% of our income while not being mustachian with our spending, I'd say we are doing pretty good. Then in 20 years or less, we'll have enough to retire if we'd like to. Otherwise we keep working while continuing to add to our retirement. The point of my story is that you can either keep your spending as low as possible while saving as much as possible or meet in the middle allowing yourself to enjoy the money a bit now while also making sure you don't have to work into your 60s.
You still haven't mentioned your income, but increasing your income may be a great way to allow you to get to where you want.
