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[pat_k]

6. I never embraced 40 year mortgages

If the small reduction in payment makes such a difference, you cannot afford the house. Subjecting yourself to 10 or 20 years of additional payments and tens of thousands more in interest is a very, very bad deal in any book I know of.

Consider this:

A homeowner with a 30-year, 6.4% $400,000 mortgage owes $2,502 per month for a total cost of $900,729 over the life of the loan.

If that homeowner has Obamacare their health insurance will go up at least $800.

Trump's solution to affordability: Get that family a 50 year mortgage!!

With a 50-year loan at 6.4% our homeowner's payments would be $2,225 a month for a total cost of $1,334,877.

So, instead of paying $2,502 per month on a 30 year mortgage, they are paying $2,225.

Oh goody, they have a whooping $277 to put toward that $800 health insurance increase. And all this at a cost of a mere $434,148 and 20 additional years of payments.

Does he really think people will get all excited over the prospect of shoveling hundreds of thousands more dollars in the pockets of banks for the privilege of squeezing expenses down a couple hundred dollars -- dollars that won't even begin to offset the costs of health insurance, electricity (no more clean energy subsidies), groceries, and every other necessity?

On edit:
I am an old fogy, but my approach to taking on debt is that I put enough down to make the payment so manageable that I can make larger payments with regularity, and only have limit myself to regularly scheduled payments when some emergency or unexpected expense leaves me short.

If I can't put that much down, I need to downsize the purchase.