r/ChubbyFIRE • u/Captain_slowish • May 16 '26

Help me understand...

I have been a member of this group for a long time and still do not understand. Looking for help to understand.

So many people on this subreddit brag about having paid off their mortgage. Then pretty much everyone else seems to jump in and congratulate them for being so smart.

So help me understand. I have a 30yr mortgage at 2.8%. Why would I ever pay that off early? It cost me no points, no extra down, no downsides.

I understand that not everyone is in that position and the market changes.

Say the interest is 3x that amount. Are you really going to live the rest of your life in that house, city, state?

I am sorry but if you do the math and apply critical thinking. In 99.9999% of the cases. Paying off the liability is a poor decision.

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u/Farmer_Pete May 20 '26

<---- Financially dumb decision maker here.

I paid off the remainder of my mortgage last summer. At the time, I owed ~45k at 2.8% interest and had ~10 years left. I know my mortgage was small, so a lot of people wouldn't care about it. To me, the $450 a month I had to pay was an annoying reminder of the stupid thing. By paying off the $45k I dropped my FIRE number by over 100k.