So what stops you from refinancing every 10 years with a 30 year fixed and never paying off the house and just investing in the market?
Also, we’re maxing out 401K for him (I don’t have a job). Is there any reason to put more in than the max? Don’t we have to pay taxes on it anyways when it comes out?
The benefit is 1) tax deductible now, and also 2) rebalancing (sell/buy if any) does not involve any tax during the period. It may grow non-taxable basis. When you take it out after 70 years, you need to take phased way, like 70k or 100k an year so that you are in low tax bracket.
Yes, you can do it. Changing world, we may not know how the mortgage market will be in future. Recently, my friend refinanced his primary mortgage for 2.375% for 30 year fixed. As long as you have very low interest rate, choose the best mortgage either 10 year or 20 year or 30 year, but pay very low interest rate and minimum PITI.
When you decide to retire, if this is fine, sell your primary home, take 500k tax free profit, move away to low cost location (where you both like it) and pay full cash home (no mortgage).
Few of my friends sold their Cupertino home 2M (very old homes 2000 sqft), moved to Mountain house (for retirement) paid full cash 750k brand new home (5B,3B 3000 sqft), excess cash they invested.
Like this, you need to plan for it.
IRA contributions have an income limit for being tax deductible. It’s $125k for married couples ($105-$125k is partial deduction).
Weren’t you advocated back door Roth last week, since you said retirement income would be higher than working income?
I was in Singapore when I invested in AAPL. I came here after the Dotcom bust.
You are eligible to contribute IRA/Roth IRA when your spouse is earning and you are not earning !
Last 25 years, your spouse would have saved appx (avg Roth 4000 * 25 =) 100k and you should have saved appx 100k in Roth option.
If you have multiplied those 200k, it would have been easily $1M.
I hope you are not aware of this.
Yes, I am not aware 
Use to trade using this account, gave up. Just buy AAPL and VOO every year and forget about it.
He is not eligible for Roth right?
He may be eligible for backdoor Roth, but my friend does not care about it. He just buys lot of real estates and businesses outright cash and employs his relatives.
The issue here is growth. A common man , who does not know about investment, can easily buy & hold VOO or QQQ and sit for life.
But, you and I know everything about trading.
Take the case of last week. Had you placed $6000 in FDX options, by this time, you would have earned $2400 in Roth - non taxable basis. If you make 4 such trades in a year, it is 100% growth.
Any way, no more updates on this subject
I spent almost 2.5 hours to update this blog since morning, but I have lot of programming work scheduled today
Good bye now…
Thanks Jil! (It’s going to take a while for me to read through and understand it all, but I will make a go at it.)
I honestly can’t make any sense of all this rambling. Income and asset values are two totally different things.
This falls somewhat financial planning side, moving to this area.
Long before I ran a check for 5 years and 10 years.
Person A invests $250 every week, irrespective of ups and downs, they have better returns than waiting for crash as crashes will happen rarely and bullish trend happens longer period of time.
Most of the retirement funds suggests weekly periodical investment. I understood the reason when I ran a check.
This is applicable for QQQ and SPY based funds.
Also if “time is money”, then the time saved not thinking about it is time you can do other work. Otherwise you have to follow the market and time it. Which means wasting lots of time reading this forum 
I see you understand “opportunity cost” of economics 101 intuitively. Many don’t grasp this concept.
If you are doing something, there are many things that you didn’t do.
I was trying to explain to @Jil about why it is better to use property manager than to do it yourself especially his time is worth more than his property manager. For example, there is a problem with your property, PM says costs $1k but he wants to go there to verify and sometimes could be done in $200, he is so damn happy he save $800. However, that took him few hrs of his valuable time which he could have traded MRNA and made $50k! Effectively, the cost of that repair is $50k + $200 
which is more expensive than PM’s $1k. Sometimes I feel like telling him why he is not as rich as @wuqijun. He is wasting too much time on low return tasks.
I used to be self-employed. Every hour worked is an hour paid. You learn that pretty quickly!!!
If I mind such hourly rates, I should stop spending time with this blog… I spend more hours here than property management.
Manch may even stop hosting this site
Huge difference! You got to pitch your thinking skill vs your fellow bloggers. Men needs to be challenged intellectually. You are lucky we didn’t charge you for that service.
Nahhh! Time here is priceless 
Vanguard offers financial planning for about 0.35% annual fee (of the total invested assets). There are robo-advisors like Wealthfront that do it for a slightly lower price.