Thanks for posting this. I've lived in various countries, states, cities, etc and Los Angeles is by *far* the most misunderstood and misrepresented city. I have no idea how people generalize a city like LA when it has so much variety in people, places, scenery, food, cultures, language, etc, there's nothing like it. Absolutely incredible place to live, we love it here.

A mortgage is a bargain because it can make you a pile of money. Interest rates have been so low that you are better off leveraging that. To each their own of course, but personally paying off a mortgage is a financial mistake.

It is a bad thing, with rates at 3% to 4% for over a decade now means paying off a mortgage is a mistake.

I totally agree life is more than finances, that's *exactly* why you leverage low interest when you can, so you can live more stress free.

I'm 47.

I have been unemployed, this is all the more reason to leverage great mortgage rates while you can!

Our home value plummeted during 2007-2011. This only hurt people if you had to sell and not buy another place, in most cases it was because people didn't buy a property within their means (ie, having a mortgage close to what rent would be). If you didn't then you just lived in your house like normal. For us it was beneficial because our property taxes went down for a decade, and now the property value is back and then some.

This has nothing at all to do with values, it's just a way to earn more money to make dealing with the situations you brought up far easier.

Real world example, yes we could have paid off our mortgage, and in fact had planned to do so to be so called "debt-free" some time ago. It's what everyone parroted at the time as the thing to do and we were going to go along with it. I mentioned that when talking to some guys who were far richer than I was at some gathering, and they looked at me like I was from the moon. They set me straight, no you don't pay off your mortgage when rates are at 3-4%. Instead we took their advice, took that money and rather than pay off our mortgage we bought another property that we rented out, nothing lavish but something within our means.

Result? Aside from 6 figures of appreciation in the price of the rental since we bought it, that property is free to us being paid off by renters and we make rent money profit every month.

Now we're saving up to do it again in a couple of years, assuming rates remain reasonably low. This way even if we are both unemployed we still get paid from rent money, it makes being unemployed *easier* to manage making life less stressful. It has other benefits but I'm not going to get into it all. Ultimately when we retire the plan is to have three fully paid off homes, one to live in and two delivering rent money so that we aren't dependent on retirement funds. This also makes life far stressful since check any forum (including this one) as people bitch all the time that retirement funds won't be there for them when they get around to retiring. In our case it won't matter since we'll have rent money, as we're taking advantage of low mortgage rates again within our means.

In other words, living "debt-free" would just add stress to our lives and put us in a worse situation. So like I said I agree, there is more to life than finances. I'd rather enjoy life rather than worry about unemployment, retirement funds, etc. But like I said to each their own, do what works for you. I was merely responding to the being "debt-free" is always good. It's not.

I'm self employed, partially retired at 47 and the the rent money from our rental pays for both our properties so none of your typical snarky comments apply to me. Ugh sometimes I wonder if you guys are being purposely obtuse or really just don't understand the financial boons available to you in this country. Good god guys you can even deduct your mortgage interest in the USA! Well whatever y'all are free to do/believe whatever you want. Pay off your mortgages, store your money under a mattress, seriously why should I care.

That's fine, like I said to each their own. But you love to mock others opinions with backhanded posts and snarky comments (not your first time) so don't be surprised when you are called out on it.

Just get a property manager if you don't want to deal with any of that.