15 vs 30 year mortgage

[littlefish]

Is it worth putting additional payments towards paying off a 15vs30 year mortgage or putting additional money in a non-matched retirement account?

[StarTrekDoc]

Depends really on the plans for the house afterwards and your liquid savings for new home at that time;  years 4-8 is a pretty wide range if you're not socking away for the down too.

Also have to look at the rental ability of the short-term home and the costs of that to manage at a distance.  It's no small feat, but doable with some effort and willingness to let someone else do it -- you have to run the #s to make sure it fits your depreciation/cash flow/appreciation model that you're anticipating out of it--there's a lot that goes into the real estate 'income' part of the mindset -- even more than 'simple' equity stock/bond allocations.

If there's real possibility for long term rental -- lock in 30year.    With a  15 year, you're not going to get the equity release into the new home without a sale, so unless you have a sizable taxable amount for the next home in 4-8 years planned, you're going to have to do movement on the short-term home.

Make sure you have access to taxable $$$ for that eventual move in 4-8 years with funds tied down to that short term home.

[jfoxcpacfp]

Go for 30 and then sell when you can make a decent profit. Consider the possibility of beating the long-term returns of a well-diversified equity index fund portfolio requiring very little time other than annual rebalancing versus acting as an absentee landlord for a one-occupant residence and all its attendant issues.