Should I pay off my mortgage?

Whatever you do, don’t keep a mortgage for the deduction. There is no way the deduction saves you more than the interest itself. The deduction takes a bit of the edge off the interest hit, but there is still always a hit! In other words, the deduction can’t save you money, it can only make you lose less.

I agree with those who say it’s a very liberating experience.

For example, the last time I changed jobs I took a chance on a startup company, which could have folded at any minute, but is actually working out pretty well.

Part of my rationale for doing that was that the house was paid off, what’s the worst that could happen ?

Thank you all for your input - I decided to do it. Just put the check in the mail a moment ago.

Don’t feel all that different yet. Will let you know!

I don’t wish to get into your finances if you don’t want to disclose them, Mach, but I can’t make the math work on your OP.

You had a 15 year loan you made 6 years ago and you’re now down to 43% of the principal? Unless you made some extra payments here and there, that should never happen. My calculations put you at a total current balance of around $26,000 (38% paid off) and a monthly loan payment of around $400.
OK, but whatever. So let’s say it’s $18,000 like you said and you’ve still got a monthly loan payment of $400. That’s $4,800 per year or 45 months before you would have paid off $18,000 the slow way.
How much in principal would you have left after 45 months? Um…dunno. My calculations are going wonky and I don’t have time to work on it right now.
But suffice it to say it’s significant. In the thousands of dollars.

Basically you’ll save thousands of dollars in interest by doing this and be able to recoup your entire output in less than 4 years. The only question is if $18,000 will take too big a chunk out of whatever you’ll need should something unexpected arise. Otherwise, I say do it.

For several years I made a practice of overpaying each month by at least $100. I also made a relatively large down payment. That’s probably why there was less principal remaining than you calculated. The final payoff amount actually came to only about $17,000 due to various bits of minutia in mortgages and interest that I don’t really understand.

The mortgage company wanted me to send a certified check or wire transfer. But I suggested, and the woman on the phone somewhat reluctantly agreed, that I could avoid that by simply overpaying my current statement in an amount that would equal the payoff total.

Done and done.

You had me at “your house is so f***ing overpriced, I hope living in Silicon Valley is worth it”.