sddreaming, I live in Central Virginia. We have our nice (small) Blue Ridge mountains to the West and the Chesapeake Bay to the East. A little too much humidity for a couple of months a year, but hey, it is just a couple of months. I love to mountain bike and for serious riding I drive to the George Washington National Forest often (40 minutes from my house). Other hobbies include SCUBA, Rock Climbing (at Seneca Rocks WVa mostly), shooting, antique truck restoration. We own our home, which we bought new in 1997 for $155K (~2800 sq. ft. on 5 acres) after selling a smaller cape and upgrading. We don’t owe anybody anything, which gives us great piece of mind.

Raybyrnes, As to drawing the equity out of my home and investing it, no thanks. Too risky for my tastes. The county just assessed our property at $330K, so there is some equity there. I want to know that I have a place to lay my head. The fact that we don’t make payments to anyone leaves us with lots of income to use towards investing. And this crap about having a mortgage for a tax write off….it makes sense to pay a bank $10,000 in interest so that I don’t have to pay the IRS ~$3,000 in taxes??? Now, let’s see, if I didn’t pay that interest, I have to pay the IRS taxes on that additional $10K, but wait, that means I have $7,000 IN MY POCKET. Hmmm, I’ll take the money in my pocket. You can get the same tax write off by donating $10,000 to your church. You never hear any bank tell you to donate $10K to the church so you don’t have to pay the IRS $3K now do you? But it is the same amount of money off of your taxable income, it just didn’t go to a bank. But people keep thinking they have to keep buying a bigger and bigger house so that they can keep their tax deduction. And I guess they figure that the house will be worth more. But it isn’t any income until you SELL IT. And you have to live some place. So either you downgrade, move to some cheaper area or do something so that the sale price leaves you with cash in your pocket. Our plan has been to just stay in the home we love and grow wealth some other way. Actually, more Americans could have piece of mind if they worked towards paying off their house and then they have a big chunk of money to use for investments each month, instead of being a slave to the lenders with a mortgage payment.