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Going to be controversial and say mortgage, not because it maximizes returns, but for the psychological aspect of having paid off your house earlier. Think about it this way, if you didn’t have a mortgage, would you borrow against your house at 3.8% interest to invest in the stock market? Answer for vast majority of people is probably not, which is essentially what you’re considering to do here.
Mentor
It’s not that people shouldn’t itemize - they should if it makes sense.
It’s that for the vast majority of people, mortgage interest is not a big benefit if you don’t have a grandfathered loan. Even 750k at 3.5% is only 24k first year (and will obviously decline). Plus 10k SALT less 25k standard is only 9k of deductible interest so like 35% or so.
Even at a 35% fed rate the subsidy is like 11-12% so maybe a 3.5% mortgage is 3.25%. The math of whether to pay off or not isn’t going to be pushed that much either way.
We’re a long way from pre-TCJA where most people with homes exceeded standard just with SALT (and rates were 3-4% points higher).
Invest. It’s free money if you put it into index funds. What you don’t want to do is go and gamble in individual stocks or options.
Yep you will get more back in stock earning then what you will save from the interest.
Subject Expert
Invest (full market low fee index)
Especially in our current inflationary environment, where it will get increasingly cheaper to pay off your mortgage.