The Bank of Canada today increased its target for the overnight rate to 5%, with the Bank Rate at 5¼% and the deposit rate at 5%. The Bank is also continuing its policy of quantitative tightening.
At these rates, the guaranteed after-tax return of paying down your mortgage looks pretty good versus uncertain stock market returns (and elevated equity valuations, which should lower expected equity returns). Curious if anyone here is focusing on paying off the mortgage more lately vs investing? Is focusing on the mortgage illogical over the long term?
Recently, with my wife, we were discussing if we should sell off all of our investments to completely pay off the mortgage at the end of our current term, or keep the investments and continue paying the mortgage every month. We decided to go with the later as if we were ever to be short, we could easily either sell our investments or borrow using them as collateral to make up for the shortfall. We aren't able to see which option would be the most beneficial from a financial standpoint, as this would require knowing the future, so we decided to stay with what looked like the most flexible solution.