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birb_cromble  11hr ago (text post)   92 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread - 2027-07-04

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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I share your hatred of debt, but I ended up going with a 30 year mortgage anyway, for the reasons that Amadan laid out below. I calculated that getting a 30 year mortgage but paying it off as if it were a 15 year mortgage would see the house paid off in 16 years. That extra year of payments is not an insignificant amount of money, but I figured the flexibility was worth it in case I should lose my job, get hit by a bus, etc., and find myself short on cash at some point in the next 15 years.

I ended up paying the mortgage down pretty aggressively in the first two years, leaving me with only 15 years of payments to go by last summer. At the time, I debated refinancing to a 15 year mortgage, and I kind of regret not doing it since mortgage rates went back up again. But if I keep paying it off at the same rate, I should be mortgage-free in less than five years anyway, so I’m not sure it matters.

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