We spent quite a bit of time thinking about mortgage repayments recently, and the overwhelmingly conclusion was to optimise for minimising short term repayments

We spent quite a bit of time thinking about mortgage repayments recently, and the overwhelmingly conclusion was to optimise for minimising short term repayments. The rationale was that with a young family our expenses are fairly high whilst our income is likely to increase in future. The consequence of this is to prioritise a long mortgage over total repayments and to not necessarily pay off as much as possible, even keeping money back for day to day spending, assuming that's budgeted properly. Obviously there is a trade off; the smaller you can get your mortgage the more flexibility you have around adjusting repayments to help with living costs. The long term view of inflation also suggests it might be better to hold more debt to ease things now. Though obviously that depends on how your wages might change in the longer run.