- quote -

I would do a little of both. You could add a little to the mortgage
principal each month which would get your housing costs to near zero even
sooner. But I would especially look at establishing and fully funding, if
possible, Roth IRAs for both of you. Now, you don't get the immediate tax
benefit. But at your age, you would have a significant number of years for
this money to grow. Roth money is tax free when you take it out, so you
don't have to share this retirement money with Uncle Sam, as you will with
your 401k money.

Elizabeth Richardson

In article <a3530201.0407110703.439d3f5e[at]posting.google.com> , Patrick
<varois83[at]netzero.net> wrote:

- quote -

There are two schools of thought.

One school is the debt-free line of thinking. That is, you get debt
free, then pay off your house. From then on, you have no more payments
to worry about. This reduces the amount of money you need to live on,
and you no longer have any money-grubbing bankers stealing from you
in the form of interest charges.

The other school of thought are the optimizers. They understand that
historical returns from the stock market are far greater than what
most mortgages are. In addition, if you pay off the mortgage, you
lose your mortgage tax deduction. The line of thinking is to get the
biggest mortgage you can, let your home go up in value over time, and
put all your extra funds into high return investments.

This boils down to a lifestyle choice. If you are comfortable with
debt and really understand and trust investing, you may want to go
with the optimizers. But if you are more like me, a person who gets
nervous with debt and cannot sleep at night if I owe someone money,
then you might want to consider the debt-free lifestyle.

-john-

--
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John A. Weeks III 952-432-2708 john[at]johnweeks.com
Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com
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Hi

We are a married couple in our late 30's with an 11 Y.O. child.We have
been financing company sponsored 401k's for about 4 years each at
15%/week, mostly all in stocks.Own a modest but new home which we have
refinanced from a 30 to a 15 years mortgage 2 years ago.
At this time in our life, we have several hundred dollars left monthly
which we have been putting on our home principal in the hope to knock
it out within 7-8 years if our finances don't change.
Our goal is to retire early at age 55 keep our modest home and travel
quiet a bit.I ain't talking first class travel but whatever is
affordable we will jump on it.My current company offers great
discounts as an airline company if i can of course retire with them.
We hope to be able to go restaurants 3 times a week and we don't need
4 stars, and own fairly new cars (Ford escort type fine by me!).
Well you get the picture of what we are shooting for, a confortable
retirement but no need of bells and whistles.
Are we doing the right thing with those xtra dollars on the home or
shall we be looking at other investments?

Thanks in advance

Patrick