I took part in the Mortgage Payoff Club thread for a while but I need a more balanced approach.
First of all, this kind of thread does not facilitate discution or reply. I like being challenged to improve my actions.
Then, I noticed through different comments that having no more debt is a status.
In Canada and USA, mortgages and student loans are virtualy the cheapest money one can borrow. I 100% agree that CC debt and consumer debts should be avoided or repaid in a hurry before even thinking to invest (with few exeption to get generous match from employer or government subsidy).
Not all mortgages are the same and thus, should not all be considered evil. Depends of every individual situation. An eye opener is a CW (35 years old) with a paid-off mortgage. Everyone here consider she's rich because she travel a lot, change car on a regular basis etc. Cashflow is very good. We talked about investing/retirement once, NO INVESTMENT AT ALL!!! No clue about this, doesn't know about the RRSP, RESP and TFSA advantages, dont know the difference between bonds and stock etc. BTW, my parents were exactly the same but with golden pension plan. Our job does not carry any...
I think we should at least run the numbers and decide when killing the mortgage is a priority (or not). For a young couple with 2 kids, average salary, no saving and/or no safety net, a mortgage 4x annual gross income should be taken seriously. On the other end (my own situation) kids are 8-12, mortgage is less than 20% of house market value & 50% of annual income. Savings worth more than 10x our debt and our emergency fund (cash) worth 4 months of expenses. The mortgage will be done in about 44 months (13 years before the 25 years amortization schedual). I see no rush to repay faster!
The "peace of mind" and "sleep better at night" are attractives arguments but can drag the overall return/NW over a lifetime.
What do you think?