Your strategy is preferable if those numbers are correct and if the person following the strategy is actually investing the difference they saved and they're ke

Your strategy is preferable if those numbers are correct and if the person following the strategy is actually investing the difference they saved and they're keeping the mortgage for the full term. I doubt most people are this disciplined, but otherwise I get the idea and definitely considered it myself. I would prefer to be able to dump all of my extra income into the mortgage and be done with it in 5-7 years, which can be done with either a 15- or 30-year. I'm generally pessimistic about markets and the possibility of there being a downturn, so I'd rather not having a housing payment at all (property tax and maintenance not included), as soon as possible. As a final note though, re: the "toxicity" of the 30-year, I think that the average person's experience with a mortgage is neither of our stated strategies. The average person isn't picking a 30-year and investing the difference between what they would have gotten on a 15-year. They're picking a 30-year, making minimum payments, probably not saving much outside of this, and potentially selling/moving or being tricked into refinancing within 7 years--when most of their payments were all going toward interest and they built very little equity into their home. That's my problem with the 30-year mortgage.