I find some level of entertainment listening to Ric Edelman, Ray Luccia, etc. Not all the time, but, in between the pitches, there is an occasional nugget of useful information. The responses to callers, rather than any monologues is what interests me most.
I always thought the idea of getting a large mortgage just to invest the money made no sense at all. That's not what the purpose of a mortgage is. I know far too many people who refinanced and pulled a lot of money out of their homes when the values went through the roof in 2005 - 2006. All of them are underwater now and most of the investment money is gone also as much never actually made it to investments (cars, TVs, vacations, etc. - just too tempting - they thought it was free money).
Some people did get free money - there was a recent article in the Washington Post about a local couple who bought a $1.2M house with no money down about 5 years ago and have never made a single payment and are still in it
. Most of us couldn't take the stress involved with that.
We are a few years away from paying off our primary home mortgage. Low 5 figures with a 3.75% interest rate (just lowered by our credit union without us asking with no costs). I don't see any reason to pay it off early - the cash flow is minimal and nearly all of it goes to principal. We have a rental property that we will probably never pay off (will sell it first) that yields a small positive cash flow. It's underwater (purchased in 2004) at the current time and I see no reason to throw money at it.
I understand that this is a really hard decision to make, but most people don't have the option (meaning assets on hand) to have any choice. All the opinions here are really interesting, as are the points of view.