Well this is derailing into general life money management. But I will admit, at one point not long ago I had one goal. Zero Debt.. Period. And I was pretty close to hitting it. No CC balances, only a mortgage and Car payment left to knock out. Then I came to a realization. If my house and car payments were on loans charging me around 3% interest, but I was able to invest money and make more than 3% then I was coming out ahead in the long run paying minimum payments to service debt and investing instead.
Later I had my eyes opened to the concept of "Buy Real Assets and never sell them". Meaning you invest in things which earn and accumulate interest/value/etc. Then as long as the financial system is handing out low (sometimes effectively negative interest rate loans when you take actual inflation into consideration) you borrow money, only pay what's necessary, and let your assets keep getting bigger/more valuable.
For instance, medium term goal for
Mrs. Haus
and I is to move out of Dallas, get at least an hour out of town to somewhere with some land and remote enough I don't have to worry about neighbors if I want to do some hunting/target shooting on my land. We could sell our current house for pretty close to enough to pay off this note, and still outright buy a place in the country. (Bought our house in 2001 and houses in my neck of town are going for 4x what I paid back then). But looking at it, that feels like I'm giving up potential assets. Instead, I plan on playing the crypto market enough to parlay my "marginal fun money" into a sizable enough down payment for the next house. Keep this one and rent it out. I can't see a future where outside temporary downturns the real estate market in Dallas would decline in value, so this house is a value accruing asset. Optimal place "in the country" would be somewhere that the inevitable crawl of suburban expansion get to our country place just in time for me to be ready to fully retire from the work world. Repeat process, buy lands further out, develop/rent our country land. (At that point I'll probably be swallowing my pride and moving into Oklahoma. heh)
But also having been raised by my depression era grandparents I can definitely see what the allure and personal value would be just outright owning your home, and will never fault a person for wanting that as it's a level of "Mazlowe Level Security" the VAST majority of our society will never feel.
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