Husain — thanks for your response. I’ll try and each point separately but I think I covered most of the reasons throughout the article. As I mentioned, the article states taking on the biggest mortgage “that you can afford.” Thus, you still need to be able to have steady income coming in to pay for expenses that go beyond your mortgage. So, your standard of living should be the same whether you plan to pay off your house in one large lump sum or not. So, the question is really not about what you want to pay monthly but the amount you want to invest. It’s about wealth creation and not debt elimination.

On your second point regarding job stability, how do you plan on obtaining the large lump sum to pay off the mortgage? Where did that money come from? How soon into your mortgage did you pay that off? And when you do pay it off, it’s now tied up in your house versus leveraging the monthly investment amount over the same 10 or 20-year (or 30) time period. In addition, as you enter into the latter part of the amortization schedule on your mortgage, your income has most likely increased during that time. Thus, the mortgage payment becomes cheaper relative to your income.

You mentioned, “selling your house and take a loss.” I’m not sure about the assumption you are using but your equity gets built up over time. So, 20 years into your mortgage will have equity that has been built up during that time and also accelerates as you enter into the last years of the 30 -ear schedule.

As I stated in reason #5 — mortgages allow you to re-mortgage and pull equity out.

Lastly, you are making the assumption that you will lose your steady income. What if that doesn’t happen? Then, you lost the full 30 years of time to compound more of your investment — and time is something you can never get back.