I'm contemplating paying off my mortgage. I have a friend whose insurance wants to let his kidney fail (again) because when he's in full-throated renal failure they only have to pick up 20% of the tab (medicare eats the rest), rather than paying for the immunoglobulin he's on to try and stave off failure. So he tried to get his hospital to give him printouts of how much it cost the insurance company (hundreds of thousands) and him (tens of thousands) the last time he went through renal failure. They won't give him anything because he's $2100 in arrears on bills. He's $2100 in arrears on bills because he lost his job. He lost his job because his kidneys are failing. I've already given him a thousand dollars. His parents have $250k/year in pensions and a million and a half in laddered CDs. But he's my problem because they think he's "irresponsible" because he eats cheeseburgers. I feel guilty contemplating paying off my mortgage. this is why lottery winners go crazy.
I paid off my mortgage and told no one. I recommend it.
I'm in "doing the math" mode. I pay roughly 3% interest on the note. I pay $50 or so in interest each month, the rest is paying off the principle. My money market/stock/non-savings cash and holdings made 16% last year. As I won't be able to deduct mortgage interest anymore due to the tax bill, I'm debating be done with it. Then again I may just use the money and fix all the little crap jobs so if I want I can sell the house quick.
$6350 single filing for the 2017 year. With the charity deductions, work stuff, state and local taxes, sales taxes etc I am way over that. I've itemized every year the past decade. Next year, 2018 tax year, standard deduction is going to be $12K and I may barely touch that depending on medical expenses.
Apparently, the GOP actually expanded medical tax deductions for the next two years, which is a huge departure from their original position that they were going to kill that deduction altogether, so you might get an extra boost. In the new law, any expense greater than 7.5% of your adjusted gross income is now deductible, instead of 10% in the previous law. This returns to 10% after two years.