2.625% house, nine years left (refinanced a 15 yr mortgage in early 2013). Mortgage payment is less than what we were paying in rent twenty years ago. Not paying it off early. We would never get to the level of being able to itemize anyway thanks to limits on SALT.
I have 11 years left on my mortgage on my main house. I started with a 30 year fixed mortgage of 7.62% in 1997, refied to 5.6 a couple of years in and then 4 years ago, moved to a 2.99 for 2 years at my credit union, where I also switched to a 15 year. The rate is now 3.65 and can’t go above 5.4, so it will always be better than what I had before. I also have a 3.95 on a variable 30 year on a piece of property we bought on a tax foreclosure a few months ago. The amounts of the two mortgages are about the same. I own another house that is paid off. I would like to sell that one and use the proceeds to retire the other two mortgages as I can then think about retirement. For awhile, I had only the one mortgage and I was paying extra, but I stopped and increased my 401k instead.
Another thing to consider is that the last years of the mortgage have ever increasing percentage principal, ie less interest to deduct anyway.
There are other factors that come into play as well. I’ve refinanced my house a number of times over the years, each time locking in a lower rate but pushing out the ultimate payoff date. So now I am sitting in a house that was purchased 30 years ago, with a mortgage at 2.85% that has a payoff around 36 months out … and I am dead set on paying that off in half the time. And maybe I could do better with money in bonds… but I’m getting older and I just would like to have the mortgage paid off by the time I hit my full social security retirement age. Because I’d rather spend my future social-security check on something other than my mortgage.
And maybe I’ll keep on earning and I do have money in IRA’s… but at some point I really do need to plan for a diminished income – so it’s really a cash flow issue as well. The less money I have to pay out on a monthly basis the more flexibility I will have in terms of whatever lifestyle choices I make.
Ugh, we built our house in 1996 and still have a mortgage. We refinanced to build an addition, and now we’re using a HELOC for college tuition for two kids. We will probably never pay it off. 
The economy slowed down at a really bad time for us.
@MaineLonghorn, at least you’re not $1mm in debt with the amount increasing like that other thread ! Yikes!
We have 2 mortgages on our house (we used some equity in our house to buy rental properties). Interest rates are in the low 3% range and they will be paid off in 8 years, but it drives me crazy to have to put so much money into a mortgage payment each month. It’s purely irrational, but I don’t want to fund things like travel or home improvements from savings, and would love to have the higher disposable income instead. It also drives me crazy that we still owe more on our house than when we originally bought it over 20 years ago (although that will no longer be the case in a couple of years). None of this bugs my husband in the least.
Our mortgage is 3.5%, and we may have 8 years left to pay on it. But we may retire in 2 years, and if we do, we will likely just pay the mortgage off. It’s not a good investment decision, but will help us sleep well at night.
Our “main” home doesn’t have a mortgage, but our second and eventual only one has one. 3.99. We’ve been prepaying every month to pay it down; I think there’s about seven years left. With the lack of itemizing in the future, I’d like to pay it off. As others say, I’d like to retire without a monthly payment. I’m definitely hugely debt-averse, even the “good” kind.
If you took out your mortgage before 2018 you are still allowed to deduct up to interest on $1mill mortgage. It is grandfathered.
Don’t forget that itemizers are also allowed to deduct $10k of SALT.
Too bad there’s a marriage penalty on that $10k of SALT. H and I would be in better shape if we could still itemize.
I don’t think we will be itemizing. It feels strange after years of doing so.
But I don’t have enough to deduct to hit the 24K. So even with two NJ houses, the standard deduction makes more sense now. Especially sad that it rolls exemptions in, which were separate before.
I’m curious to what people have to deduct beyond SALT that would make itemizing still worthwhile. Those and mortgage interest were the main bulk of our itemized items.
Take the 10k of state and local taxes as a base, and it doesn’t take a super large amount of charitable deductions and mortgage interest to exceed an additional 14k and push the total above the 24k standard deduction, especially for those who live in higher cost of living areas and have higher mortgage amounts.
For us it was charitable
we wont itemize this year, and while we dont have extra $ each month with 2 in college, i’d sure like to put more towards mortgage now that we cant deduct that interest. going to look into that.
Yup, that is my dilemma.
Paradoxically, no. You have the most flexibility by NOT paying off the mortgage early. Instead of paying down the final 36 months of mortgage payments, the money just sits in the bank where it can be used for anything that pops up; perhaps a medical emergency for you or one of your kids. OTOH, if you pay down the mortgage, your bank balance goes down by that exact amount, reducing your flexibility.
But still, the emotional impact of having paid off the note looms large - I know it does for me. 
This is not really a good place to get tax advice. You’ll need to talk to a tax professional 