Pension lump sum or single life annuity

Eh, I’m just of the old school ideology where you want to have as little “debt” as possible. Also, there is that opportunity cost of having to make that mortgage payment each month. With that (just making up a number) $1,800/month, you could invest that in moderate growth stocks and use that mortgage money to make you more money. Or, if you were extrememly risk averse, you could put that money into a high yield savings account and get paid interest for just parking that money.

To each his own. I can understand your logic as well.

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No. And you can usually write the interest off your taxes too.

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It’s complicated.

You can’t actually claim mortgage interest unless you itemize. As a separated man, the standard deduction is better for me filing separate.

As a young man, things were much simpler. Now, it’s dealing with dividends as ordinary income, estate tax avoidance, state tax avoidance, etc . . .

I will be moving to Nevada shortly to avoid these issues.

First world problems.

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I never got any tax benefit off of my mortgage interest…make too much money i guess

Generally itemizing, to include mortgage interest write-off, benefits higher income. If you are high income and not benefiting from itemization it may be wise to consult an estate lawyer and CPA.

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The mortgage interest is much lower than standard deduction…therefore no tax benefit…maybe i said incorrectly above

That does make more sense. Mortgage interest ends up as a line item on a “sheet” usually. High income varies by region but around $100k plus is usually a good time to review viability, and true “high income” is approaching $200k and above, where essentially everybody is itemizing.

Not trying to be argumentative or put you on the spot but if you are high income Id recommend having a tax professional take a look.

Scenario can matter too if you’re looking at retirement distributions and various asset classes change to distribution.

No worries…i do have my tax guy do my taxes