I've recently had a major aha moment with personal finance where I realize that "simple" maybe better than "correct". While many (and that maybe an understatem

I've recently had a major aha moment with personal finance where I realize that "simple" maybe better than "correct". While many (and that maybe an understatement) dislike Dave Ramsey I've been listening to his podcast for a couple months. I'm pretty good with money (no debt) and have a good household income ($350k). I assumed I did not need any tips as I was aggressively saving anyways. It took a few weeks but Dave Ramsey's principles finally clicked. If you can get past his brashness and ideologies which you may disagree with his advice is very sound - even when it's not the most efficient. Here's an example. Many people keep their mortgage for the full duration (often 30 years) while maxing out investments because they earn a higher interest rate then the mortgage charges. Mathematically this makes the most sense. However, he always asks people if their house were paid off if they would take a loan against it to invest in the market. The answer is an obvious no --- but he equates that to what people routinely choose to do by delaying paying off their house. It took me many times hearing it before I started thinking he maybe right. We often don't factor in the risk of paying off a mortgage but it's still there if you look at it the way he explains. Anyways...TL;DR is that me and my wife went all in on his approach (basically never borrow money and get on a budget). Here's what I've noticed. - 1) We're spending about 25% less than we were before getting on a budget. - 2) It doesn't really feel any different which means we were wasting that 25% anyway. - 3) My wife and I's communication improved drastically. - 4) I realized we could pay off our home ($1.1M) in about 10 years --- prior I had always stressed about being able to pay it off before retiring. - 5) We're planning a remodel which we likely would have taken a $300k loan for - but instead we are planning to cashflow it by saving that money and postponing the acceleration of paying off the house (now 14 years instead of 10 - still better than 30) - 6) Meanwhile we're still contributing to retirement (15% of income as recommended) so by retirement we'll be okay too All that to say --- I stopped trying to over optimize and this feels so much better and I've quickly become debt averse (even though the only debt I carry is the mortgage).