Paying off your mortgage is bad.

 Paying off your mortgage is not such a good idea today.

During the real estate boom, many an mortgage companies espoused borrowing against your home to buy more homes, creating wealth or consolidating debts or even buying cars, boats, vacations etc.. Basically they were saying to Americans to use their home equity as cash cow.

While that worked for very few, for awhile, you can see how that turned out. A real disaster and terrible advice. But even now, traditional and conservative financial advisers still say that paying off your mortgage is not the best use of cash, as your mortgage interest is tax deductible, and the better use of the funds is to invest them for growth.

For people who can and are inclined to pay their homes off, though, this rule is off-target. Paying off your home is less about making the most assertive financial move possible, and more about creating security, fixing a low set of living expenses, and hedging against economic and job market uncertainty.

The best practice in today's economy is to make money moves that create maximum sustainability and minimum stress; if that means paying your mortgage off, then do it.