I readily concede that one solution does not fit all AND I salute your newfound moderation in tone.

MY bottom line issue with your posts, sir, is that you’ve done a little math and found an investment strategy that you like.
Having done so, you have come onto this forum to berate a bunch of people whose gut-level understanding of risk is leading them to a strategy that might well be “better” than yours.

By “better”, I’ll even concede that what you recommend will likely yield more money 8 times out of 10.
However,
(gotta throw this in there because I know you love it when I use metaphors I’ve heard from someone else)
if you cannot swim, the fact that the average depth of a lake is 3 feet WILL NOT HELP YOU when you’re in the 9 feet deep part.

Translation: people who live well within their means and pay off their mortgages are managing the risk that they will get laid off, become disabled, or otherwise loss significant sources of income. Even if these unfortunate events never occur and they suffer some opportunity costs based on their actions, that doesn’t necessarily make them wrong. Or sheep. Or lemmings.

It’s also clear that you don’t know

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruin_theory
http://risktheory.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_utility_hypothesis

what you don’t know, and it appears you are unlikely to learn.

Good luck anyway, things will probably work out ok for you.

A real-life example of why maximizing the expected value of the return is not always the way to go:
When you buy homeowner’s insurance that is correctly priced, you will ALWAYS pay more than the expected value of any loss you might suffer.

In order for your insurance company to remain viable, your insurance premium must cover
1) the annual expected value of any loss you will suffer.
2) administrative costs (administering billing/premium collections, paying adjusters to evaluate your claim when you suffer a loss, determining and filing insurance rates, underwriting & pricing your policy, paying agents’ commissions, etc.)
3) a PROFIT for the insurance company.

Paying for all of the above means paying a premium that is, on average, MUCH higher than the average loss suffered by a group of similar properties in a given year.

Despite the fact that, on average (like investing in the stock market vs. paying down your mortgage) you would come out ahead skipping homeowner’s insurance and investing the premium, reasonable people would rightly view someone who chose to “go it alone” as an idiot.

This is because not all dollars are created equal.

$400,000 LOST to a house fire (for argument’s sake, with a probability of 0.0015 X 400,000 = an expected loss of $600)

is much more BAD than $800 GAINED in saved insurance premiums is GOOD.

That is, for most folks (and rightly so), investment losses have a higher negative utility (they “hurt” more) than similar investment gains have positive utility. People intuitively get this. It doesn’t make them “sheep”, it is actually very reasonable.

Of course,
“we shouldn’t just assume that mortage lenders always know what they are doing, as 2 of the largest ones became insolvent as a result of bad mortgage loans”
is a point well made, and well taken.

MY beef with above financial savant above is that, in grasping the concept of maximum expected value, he thinks he understands EVERYTHING about finance and investing. Even though he is blind to risk, utility, and ruin theory.

Like a chimpanzee with a handgun, he means no harm, and yet…

Paying off a mortgage cam very well be smart, but I am not sure on that specific argument.