6.125% has P&I of $2625/month.5.75% has a P&I of $2521/monthThis is a $104 benefit.Paying $4400 more towards principle will reduce your payment to $2598, a $27/month savings.Math says buying the rate down has a larger net benefit to you up front, but it will take you 42 months to break even.

Which will probably wind up in the stock market.  

At least you won't have to stock the whole place.

One day, I noted that the company stock had fallen from $96 down to $0.48. 

To do that, I was intending to sell some stock (75k to completely pay of home 1). 

Alignment of interest between management and investment capital is a cornerstone principle that is never compromised.

There are many similar suburbs along the 270 corridor in North County that would probably have similar housing stock though you may need to look a little east (toward downtown) to find the inventory. 

In other words, if one property requires a major repair, reserves from other properties can help cover the expense, reducing the need for each individual property to have a fully stocked reserve at all times.

If you’re close to $150,000 in AGI, a few ways you can bring that down AGI is by maxing out a 401k traditional ($23k for 2024 tax year), maxing out your HSA ($4,150 for 2024 tax year), and if you have any capital losses from stocks (up to $3k per year), I would encourage you to have great bookkeeping to ensure you’re capturing all of your deductions appropriately on your rental property.

this is good.2. saving up a bunch of cash to "retire" as quickly as possible, putting 100% of it in stocks, and then obsessing about the safe withdrawal rate for the rest of time.