Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering

Is paying off your mortage a #1 personal finance priority?
Paying off your mortgage early being good is a myth.  It is great for the chronic overspenders to have their mortgage paid off so when they rack up credit card bills and get behind, well they still hae a place to stay. But for those who are more logical with their money paying off your mortgage early in current conditions makes no sense.  You can get a 30 year loan well below 4%.  Discounting taxes for your average family you would have a rate floating below 3%.   So reasons that paying off your mortgage should be almost LAST (given current low long-term interest rates): The first thing you should do is take care of any high interest debt.  I would say that anything more than 7-8%, including all credit card debt should be focus #1. putting money into your retirement savings is #1.  You will earn way more than 3% over the long-run.  you can earn a higher return in the market.  Even with a very conservative portfolio you can clear 5-6%, which will still clear more than 3% after taxes. for those who say you can't be sure about the market... well if the market did bad for 30 years in a row no one will have money and the house will also be worthless. if a disaster happens to your house and you own it, your money is gone.  In many cases you would be able to declare bankruptcy and let the bank take the property as is.   there are just too many examples but if you are paying off your house early, you lose the flexible/liquid money that you now have tied up in the house. Now the reasons for paying down your mortgage are really easy too: you don't trust your spending habits you want to move up in houses and you want to make sure that you have at least 20% down on future house to skip PMI.