The decision to pay off a mortgage or invest in the market is far from black and white. For those who are close to retirement and already have plenty of other liquid financial assets, paying off a mortgage could be a wise use of cash. Such homeowners aren’t likely to be saving a lot because of their mortgage-interest deductions, which tend to be more valuable early in the life of the loan than in the later years, and their investment-asset mixes might be skewing toward low-returning cash and bonds, not stocks. Moreover, many retirees concur that reducing their in-retirement overhead by retiring debt reduces worries and frees up cash for travel and other pursuits. For others, however, a mortgage pay down might not be the right answer. Although it might seem comforting to own your home free and clear, there’s invariably a trade-off involved. You’re reducing your investments in more liquid assets in favor of an asset that’s not liquid at all. A happy medium for many households might be to balance modest prepayments of mortgage principal with ongoing contributions to retirement-plan accounts. Here are some questions to think through as you make this important decision for your household.
Is your retirement plan on track? Before paying off a mortgage you may want to spend some time evaluating the viability of your retirement plan. Paying off a mortgage rather than investing in the market may mean having fewer liquid assets for retirement. However, with lower household expenses, you may be able to step up your future retirement-plan contributions; having a paid-off home will also mean that your in-retirement costs may be lower. Time horizon is an important aspect of decision-making here. Those with more years until retirement can better harness the compounding benefits of investment assets, whereas those nearing or in retirement and expecting to begin drawing on their investment assets might not get such a big bang from investing more.
What’s your investment mix, and where are you holding it? The composition of your investment assets and where you hold them are also important considerations. The case for investing in the market rather than prepaying the mortgage gets even stronger if you hold your investments within the confines of a tax-sheltered vehicle and/or you’re earning matching dollars on your contributions. On the flip side, portfolios that are heavy on cash and fixed-income securities, especially those that are fully taxable from year to year, are less likely to out earn mortgage interest rates.
How diversified are you? Some homeowners think of their houses as a retirement-savings vehicle: When it comes time to retire, they’ll cash in their equity and downsize to a smaller place. However, the past several years have taught many homeowners that’s easier said than done. Many haven’t been able to sell when they wanted, and they also haven’t been able to receive anything close to the prices they were expecting. Pairing home equity with more liquid stock and bond assets may give you a lot more flexibility to ride out downturns in the housing market.
How much is your mortgage-interest deduction saving you? Many homeowners assume that it’s wise to hang on to their mortgages because of the tax deduction they can take on their interest. But that deduction shrinks as the years go by because home loans are front-loaded toward interest payments. People who have been able to pay down a mortgage for many years may be overestimating the amount of taxes they’re saving by having a mortgage, and itemizing deductions may not be saving them much versus the standard deduction.
Diversification does not eliminate the risk of experiencing investment losses. Government bonds are guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government as to the timely payment of principal and interest, while stocks are not guaranteed and have been more volatile than bonds. FPC loves to work through these types of scenarios. Please reach out to one of our advisors for help or further information!