...No other expense in your life is as volatile as investment returns either. No one ever seems to want to apply this same logic to food, clothing, insurance, . . . But, in fact, they are harder on your volatile investment returns than the fixed mortgage -- because they actually inflate when you suffer losses to your investment returns.
In the interest of brevity (of which I have never been accused!) I left out a few items we'd discussed long ago.
Certainly the other items have to be paid, but if you have to accumulate $25 in your preretirement for every $1 in your annual expenses (which is what 4% works out to) before you can retire, and your annual expenses include significant debt payments, then you'll have to delay retirement quite a while to accumulate that extra nest egg.
I am not sure how we can all pretty much agree that 4% is all you can withdraw from a portfolio safely for food, when you could always substitute hamburger for steak if times got tough, but somehow a 6% figure is OK when the payment goes to debt, and there is really not much way you can tighten your belt at all on those payments.
Otherwise, everyone ought to immediately refinance their homes and cars and 1st born children for the maximum possible and invest the proceeds -- that would be the only wise decision. Why accumulate ANY equity in your home, car, etc., if you are confident you can invest better than the borrowing rate?
I said before and I'll repeat now -- if there was any way I could prepay for all my food for life at anything under 25x the annual food bill, I'd sell funds and spend the money in a heartbeat. The same with clothing, soap, and duct tape. But I can't, with anything except a house.
The 2x figure included some average meaure of "comfort zone" as well as actual financial rewards, by the way. Those who had no financial worries seemed to be less concerned, but those starting early retirement with pretty close to just enough to fund an acceptable retirement at 4% seemed to feel that a big liability sitting out there was a bigger threat than the potential rewards could justify.
Dory36, who pays off credit cards when the bills arrive, not waiting until they are due...