[quote=UCGal]As the most debt averse person here… let me chime in.
The payment doesn’t effect your lifestyle now – but what about when you retire? Or do you plan to work the full 20 years into the future?
Once that debt is resigned – you can cashflow the $320/month into other investments, dollar cost averaging. Pick an investment – equities, gold, big heavy things to haul up and down your driveway?
But I think I’m atypical for most of piggington. My goal is to get 100% debt free. (Less than a year till the mortgage is paid in full – and looking at lumpsumming it now.) I’m looking at the freedom of not having to service the debt… that’s huge to me – and frees up my income for other investing.[/quote]
I agree with your chain of thought UCGal. I don’t think there is any right or wrong answer as it just depends on each individual and their personal financial situation and comfort level with debt. But I’ve always been of the belief that eliminating debt is a good thing.
Sure, you will get many that tell you how leveraging is smart and you can invest that $50k into something else and do much better. Sure, but I’ve also personally seen people squander money like that in similar situations with loaning money to family/friends that they never got back, blowing it on bad investments, or just spent the money as it was burning a hole in their pocket.
When I graduated from college I had monstrous student loans and my goal was to just pay them off as soon as I could. Fortunately I had a great job and was making great income so I paid it off fairly quickly and I don’t regret it at all.
