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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1581 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 30, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Who here makes extra payments on his mortgage? Or has a paid-off house?

I make extra payments, and looking through my amortization table just now I was incensed to learn that a full 75% of all of the reduction in our loan balance is solely due to our extra principal payments! What in the scam? (Edit: I guess I have to clarify that I am not retarded and do not believe that a 30-year mortgage is literally swindling me through nefarious trickery.)

Further, to say nothing of the compounded benefits, we have a present-day benefit in the form of $2,000 of saved interest, and we're still very near the beginning of our loan term! It's obvious when placed next to an amortization schedule that assumes we only make necessary payments.

(2/1/2026 Loan Balance)minimum payments - (2/1/2026 Loan Balance)extra principal - (sum of extra principal paid) = ~$2,000

What is your interest rate? Why would you pay it off fast when basically every other asset class has been on a mega bull run for like 15 years and returns higher than your interest rate?

One of the most OP parts of homeownership is the leverage. No bank is giving you $500k to buy SPY.

Milk that baby. The people who locked in at ultra low rates at the bottom of COVID have printed. A mortgage with a rate lower than inflation is quite literally free money (for you).

6.5%.

Trust me I know the optimal thing to do is make the required payments and put everything else into SPY.

But debt is icky. Another party makes sure I pay the same amount every month at the same time or the bank takes the house, which isn't the case in the counterfactual: I just miss out on some percentage points in a brokerage account. And I don't want to arrange my life so that suddenly everything snaps into place when I'm...old and tired.

I largely go half-and-half investing and paying the house down these days.

Real talk risk free and tax free 6.5%... mortgage sounds like the correct call.

Can't you deduct mortgage interest payments from your income taxes? That would make it "not quite" tax free.

This deduction is much less common with the post-2017 standard deduction increase.

6.5% means it's actually much closer to equity returns and the psychological benefit does matter

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