It's not about how much you make. It's about your deductions.

All of your property tax is deductible. All of the interest on your mortgage is deductible. If your income is low enough, all with the interest paid on your student loans is deductible. Health care costs are deductible.

If those plus your other deductions cross whatever the threshold is, then you itemize and if it doesn't, you take the lump.

That's why I like FreeTaxUSA.com because it actually does all of your deductions and then tells you which one is the better choice for you.

I agree, I was just letting them know that a mortgage not going to stay at the same price throughout the entire length of the loan regardless of how it's set up.

It could also decrease, like if there's a massive housing value crash and your house is now worth 20% of what you paid for it, then upside is your property taxes should also only be 20% of what they were.

And the only reason why I even thought to share was because I myself was shocked when my mortgage increased after the first year, even though it was only like 60 bucks, I was like, man, I thought a mortgage was not supposed to change.

You typically escrow your property tax payments based on an estimate from your mortgage lender.

So, if you were paying $1200 in taxes last year and $1320 this year, the extra $120/year (aka $10/mo) would get tacked onto whatever you're paying the mortgage lender.

I'm speaking from an American perspective, but usually, when you have a loan, the loan requires that your property tax be paid and that you keep house home insurance on the property. And so to prevent difficulties, what they'll do is the mortgage company will bundle your choice of home insurance and the payments for your property tax into an escrow account.

If your property taxes rise, then the mortgage company will tell you, hey, you either have to pay a lump sum to keep it at the same amount, or you have to start paying more every month.

And since property taxes are a fairly set value, it honestly doesn't matter whether you pay them over each month or all as a lump sum, you're going to be paying the exact same amount because that's the amount of money that has been charged to you for owning the property.

I can understand your point. We did some minor changes for my wife's peace of mind, but we bought the home with the idea that it wasn't our forever home. The one we're in now we are keeping though. We've remodeled the previous owners remodeled kitchen... Added things to the house that do nothing for value, but the pressure of knowing we're going to have to resell it is completely gone.

We had a 15 year mortgage on the old house and the whole point was to pay it off and get rid of it while we looked for something better. We never even painted the walls, it was still contractor beige when we left. Our house was livable though and already open concept, so we didn't really have to make any major changes to it. We just turbo cash dumped into the principal at every chance.

That being said, if my wife would have had any major issues, we would have changed things. It was just "acceptable" enough for us to treat it like a long ass lease and leave it almost like we found it.