Reply to Saving for college vs paying off house

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DH and I come from very different money backgrounds. My family has always had stocks and invested. His has always paid off their house (and didn't pay for college)

Every time I want to put more money into investments, we have a big discussion. He ALWAYS wants to put the money into our mortgage instead. Last night he was upset he learned I had been putting 4k in DD's 529 plan. He thought that 4k a year would be better put to our mortgage and then if we wanted to help her with college, our mortgage would be gone and we could help her more.

FWIW our mortgage isn't THAT much (300k at 4%) and [b]our salaries aren't high (180k) [/b]so we do have to make smart decisions about money. Is there something we could read or get information on what to do? I don't mind having a mortgage forever and he wants it to be our primary focus. We have 150k that I wanted to buy a rental property with, but he can't get over our huge mortgage balance and wants it paid off instead. I'm just sick of having the same discussion about paying off the mortgage over and over again. [/quote]

Reality check: at 180k, your HHI is close to [b]4x[/b] the national median and roughly [b]2.5x[/b] the DC median. Your salaries are high by definition.[/quote]

OP here. It was sort of sarcasm because there's several threads about 300k being poor on DCUM. We know we have good salaries. Salary is sort of relevant to this thread, so that's why I posted it. [/quote]

Gotcha. :D But yeah, we're risk averse (and the PPs who paid off our house in our 20s), so I'd vote knocking out the mortgage. Yes, you'd get more if it were in the market, but there's not a single person out there who lives solely for money. No one's working 18 hours a day 365 days a year in the highest paying job s/he could possibly find while spending nothing but the money necessary for basic sustenance. We all do things that reduce our finances to increase our perceived quality of life. Paying off the mortgage earlier (much earlier) for the peace of mind of a virtually foolproof retirement plan was more than worth whatever % we could have gotten if we'd kept it all in the market. YMMV.[/quote]

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