Well, the numbers don't really work out that way. We refinanced down from the original 9.25 percent 30-year to 7.25 15-year a number of years ago. Meanwhile, the tax deductions from the 9.25 percent mortgage in the early years of the loan were pretty valuable as a tax shelter. High interest rates sometimes have a beneficial side! But the real point of the story is.....
At the end of 10 years, or 20 years, or 30 years, a person can sell the house and get money back (which will vary greatly for each situation)....but money WILL come back, even if the house didn't appreciate a dime. And we will not have to pay any capital gains tax when we sell, or at least not much, unless appreciation continues unabated----you have to figure in that tax for most other types of investments (or "opportunities", as you call them), such as investing in the stock market and taking profits on your gains.
No opportunities are lost in my case, to my way of thinking.
We wouldn't have put our income into the stock market during those early years...we weren't risk-takers back then. The market wasn't so hot, as I recall, anyway.
Frankly, we have most of our money OUT of the stock market today---managed to bail from taxable mutual funds before things got too bad last year....have only a relatively small-sized trading account. Our *wealth* (whatever there is of it) is heavily invested in long-term CDs, bonds, and real estate, in the belief that "it's not what you make, it's how much you keep that counts."
At this stage, we're working harder at keeping what we have and avoiding the tax man. Real estate and bonds will do that for you, fortunately. |
