The Trillion-Dollar Win Hiding in Your Mortgage

It is time to look more favorably on your mortgage. The leap in interest rates of the past two years means that an old fixed-rate loan should be thought of as one of your most valuable assets, rather than a deadweight loss you have to pay the bank every month.

Getting one’s head around the idea that money you owe to someone else is an asset is hard. And sure, you still owe the money. But apply the logic used in the market, and there’s been a transfer of well over $1 trillion in wealth from banks and bondholders to borrowers as rates have soared—a gain in wealth widely ignored by the beneficiaries.