If you like Colorado, boy let me tell you about southwest Missouri.......

If you squint really hard, they're practically the same! Mountains, rivers, an airport - SW MO has it all!

(But to be fair, there's a decent amount of outdoorsy stuff you can do in SW MO and NW AR. It just comes with a lot more heat, humidity, and bugs than I prefer.)

Age 30. Everyone says dumb to pay off low interests rates mortgage but it really helped me get ahead of the game to throw money at other things. Maybe it was more mental than financially strategical but worked for me.

Oh the humidity in teh summer is just as fun as the cold in the winter.

There's tons you can do outdoors here. We like to drive around the lake and look at meth houses.

47. I started with a 30 year then switched to a 15 when rates dropped significantly. I paid that off early when the interest I was paying wasn't significant enough to matter on taxes. It's so nice not having that payment.

Nothing wrong with that. Paid off house is a huge asset on the books.

Paid off the first house at 35. The kids were out of school so we sold it and bought 30 acres of timber with a shed on it and paid cash.We remodeled the shed and lived there for a year while we built a new house on a 15 year loan. Couple more years, it’s ours.

Plus the apartment in the shed
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I used to be of the mindset to pay off my mortgage when I was in my early 40's. We had a friend over for a dinner party and I was bragging on my plan to be mortgage free. This was just before the housing bubble exploded. My property value had skyrocketed.

My friend carefully explained to me the trapped equity sitting in my house that did nothing. I believe mortgage rates were around 5% IIRC. He explained how if I took out 100k of that trapped equity and put it to work making more than the 5% I was being charged on the 100K I would be money ahead.

I did as he suggested and purchased a 4 plex with the standard 25% down. We were making a little over 10% cash on cash on my investment. I had a little more cash left over that we sat on waiting for another deal where we could get that kind of return.

Shortly after the housing market crashed we purchased a Duplex on a short sale with about a 30% cash on cash return.

Mortgage money is cheap for now. We have 4 mortgages, 3 on rentals and 1 for our primary residence. The tenants are paying the bills on the rentals. We could take money out of investments and payoff the primary but as long as the investments are earning more than the Principal and Interest, it doesn't make since to me financially.

We do have 3 properties that we own free and clear or I should say our IRA's own free and clear since they are situated inside a Self Directed IRA.

This seems really smart. I've historically been too conservative to do something like that. I just want to make sure that I'm never going to be homeless.

This, I ran the numbers when we bought our current house. I could have paid a 15, but the difference at a 6% return would be over 600k in 30 years. So I invested that extra amount instead.

100% Debt free before I was 43 including the house and have remained that way.

We moved into our 2nd house in the early 80s, and the rate on a 30 yr. fixed was 12.75%. I refinanced at 9.75% and later at 6.5%, and kept paying the same amount as the first loan. Paid it off in 16 years at age 42.

Then that payment went to the kids college tuition - three graduated debt free.

Then excess money went into my 401k, which I was maxing out for several years.

When the company wanted to phase out pensions, I was old enough to stay in the pension system (Younger people went to IRA only, with greater matching funds). I put about 300 grand into an annuity.

I retired at age 59, and am living comfortably on my pension, annuity, and some stock dividends. Its been 5 years and I have not yet tapped into Social Security or my IRAs.

The beauty and key to this plan is that if really needed, we could liquidate some investments and payoff the Mortgage on our primary residence.

Yeah, that's a good use of your money.

There is definitely an aspect of risk that you have to be comfortable with.

I've always thought the idea of having someone else pay the mortgage on real estate I own would be great...

Except for that whole "being a landlord" thing. I think I'd rather stab myself in the eye than have to deal with idiots tearing up something I own.