EricHadley take a look at your income (both active and passive) and based upon your risk tolerance and ability to leverage/manage debt, figure if you can make more than 4.55% investing compared to paying off your mortgage. If the answer is yes, you are better taking that money and investing it now to grow it vice paying off the mortgage.

Note: before people freak out, this strategy is not right for everybody and is dependent upon individual circumstances. This tends to work better with people with larger incomes and risk tolerances.

I did the opposite of most everybody and used the low interest rates to go buy my dream property. I found a unique property that I purchased at a third under market value and was able to lock in at sub 4% interest for 30 years and was grandfathered into the MID before it went down. I have had to put in (and continue to do so) a significant amount of money, but it is increasing the value of the property greater than the amount I am putting in. Due to changes in zoning, there are features of the property that insure that the price only goes up, not down.

I am in the early part of my prime earning years, so do not mind shouldering the extra debt load while being able to greatly increase my familiy’s quality of life. As others have said, I have been able to use debt to acquire the property while using capital to make gains greater than the interest rate, which is a net positive. I will be able to pay off the property before the 30 years, and when all is said and done, the property will be a tremendous asset. Worse case, if something absolutely cataclysmic happened, I can walk away at any time with a gain.

Not intended to flex, but just illustrating that debt is not necessarily a bad thing, and can be leveraged effectively to increase your net worth while providing a lot of benefits.