@Paradox25 Credit score is not something to worry about when paying off a mortage in my opinion. Paying off the mortgage might cause the score to dip a little, but if the goal is living more and more debt free, I say so what. Having some credit cards is sufficient for great credit, along with bills not going to collections and other obvious things. We have great credit, no mortgage, cars owned outright (we did recently lease a new car, but had great credit before that) we use our credit cards for almost everything, and always pay them off in full.
Paying off most of the house dimishes the OP’s savings, and keeps his monthly mortgage payment requirement the same. So if he hits a difficult time, he still has the same monthly obligations. Paying it off (which I advise against right now, but hopefully in the near future) will mean no mortgage payments and being able to start saving a lot of money every monoth going forward.
@susanc Ok, that is what I was sort of skirting around, but my knowledge of taxes is not expert level that’s for sure. Anything below $10k more or less (whatever the cut off is for itemizing) in mortgage interest and property taxes combined only gives the $1,000 deduction, isn’t that right? I didn’t think it was 25%, I thought it was a flat amount? But, now I am questioning myself after what you wrote, but not sure if you were just using numbers that worked out to that percentage as an example.