Just realized something that completely shifted how I think about my retirement situation. Most people assume you need to own your home outright before you stop working, right? Yeah, I used to think that too. But here's what actually happened in my case.

We've moved around a ton over the years—24 times to be exact—so we've never had the chance to fully pay off a mortgage before hitting retirement age. For the longest time, this stressed me out. Like, genuinely kept me up at night. Then I looked at the actual numbers and everything changed.

Turns out I'm far from alone. About 10.5 million people over 65 in the U.S. are still carrying mortgages. So yeah, there's definitely a crowd of us in this boat.

Here's the thing that clicked for me: I was looking at our monthly payment and complaining about how high it was compared to our old place. But when I actually sat down with the bills, I realized property taxes and homeowners insurance add up to almost as much as our principal and interest combined. Which means even if we paid off the mortgage tomorrow, we'd only eliminate roughly half the housing payment. The taxes and insurance? Those stay no matter what.

Plus, our mortgage rate is actually lower than what we've averaged on our investments over the last couple decades. The S&P 500 has returned about 10.3% annually over 30 years, or 7.6% when you account for inflation. Our mortgage rate doesn't come close to that. So mathematically, it makes way more sense to keep investing rather than throwing everything at the mortgage.

But here's what really made me comfortable with carrying a mortgage into retirement: we're getting aggressive about eliminating everything else. Last year I got serious about the smaller debts that were just sitting there. Already knocked out the car payments, and we're on track to be completely debt-free in about a year—except for the mortgage. That single debt is manageable.

When I add it all up—Social Security, a pension, some royalty income, and our investment withdrawals—we can actually live comfortably through full retirement age even with that mortgage payment still going. We won't be rich, but comfortable is exactly what we aimed for anyway.

The way I see it now, having a mortgage in retirement isn't ideal, but it's absolutely workable if you plan for it properly. The key is making sure all your other debt is gone and you've built enough income streams to cover it. That's what gives me peace of mind about the whole thing.