why do people keep starting these threads over and over and over again.. .maths are maths. 30 year at today's rate wins and is safer in FIRE than paying it off. use Cfiresim. unless you want to assume unreasonably low returns ... in which case your 4% SWR isnt good anyways.
Because everyone's situation is different and by sharing, they are helping others determine what is right for them.
boarder42, an acceptable risk profile is different for most 50-year-olds than it is for a 30-year-old.
I max out all of my pre-tax savings, and then I invest some extra for post-tax, but rather than putting all of the extra into post-tax investment accounts, I use part of that to pay down my mortgage. Here are a few reasons why.
#1. emotional. I get it. enough said.
#2. Tax-cutting strategy to reduce taxable income at retirement . My house payments are large and burdensome. I am trying to minimize expenses in retirement, and therefore minimize income (and taxes) needed to cover those expenses.
#3. Asset re-allocation for reduced risk-tolerance.. Consider that paying a mortgage down is simply reducing my risk tolerance as I grow older. This summer, it happened to really work out well for me. It's the first time that market timing & luck worked in my favor. But the bottom line is that I asked myself if I could stomach losing 30% of my portfolio, and my answer was no...I wanted more safety and I went for it and got lucky with timing, but I also understood my personal cash flow situation enough to know that if favorable conditions for buying back in exist, then I have the cash flow now to do so. And I've been buying back in.
So I have to ask, Boarder, when you know that there is emotion included in these decisions, why do you keep arguing it? How much money do you borrow with other collateral in order to invest more? How often do you invest on margin? why not more? Why not go all in? Presumably, it's because you've found your acceptable risk tolerance.