I never sold any taxable investments to pay off my mortgage...
I'm 2 years into a 5/30 mortgage at 4.25%, balance is $494k on a $2m home.
I have $500k in taxable investments in a Vanguard brokerage account.
Savings is 100k in cash, $1.5m in retirement accounts, other assets about $1.5m (..) age 55 with 10-15 years to retirement,
income is 6 figures and stable job as a physician.
I'm in the highest tax bracket in a high tax state that limits mortgage interest deduction to $10k (California).
..if I should sell my taxable investments and pay off my mortgage, or just chip away at it for a few years until it's paid off.
My mortgage was in the 1990s, so lots of things were different back then.
Tax rates, tax brackets, LTCG rates, mortgage rates, tax laws were all different from today.
Many nerds would say build a spreadsheet and do the analysis.
I'm a nerd, but I never did that.
Bottom line was:
A. I couldn't stomach the tax hit.
B. I hated being in debt.
So I paid extra on the mortgage every month, doubling or even tripling the mortgage payment.
A couple of times I paid an extra $50k or so when I had a windfall.
Statistics: Posted by doobiedoo — Wed Jun 12, 2024 3:24 am — Replies 23 — Views 1667