re: Mortgage Question

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Convince them to do a 15 year mortgage. The interest rates are crazy cheap right now.

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Not necessarily. Believe it or not 30 year can be better than the 15. It isn't just the interest rate that matters, you also must consider the cost of not investing the extra money you pay each month.

It happens I ran the numbers in Excel last week, and concluded that if the economy picks up again over the next 15 years, you are better off with the 30 year note (about 3% after tax rate) over a 30 year investing horizon than you are with a 15 year note (about 2% after tax rate) over that same 30 year horizon.

Put it another way - with the 15 year note you are required to pay extra to retire a 2% debt when you could be investing it in a 10% bull market instead.

This assumes you can fully deduct the interest, which (roughly) turns a 4% 30 year rate into 3% after tax and a 3% 15 year rate into a little over 2% after tax. It also assumes that if you go with the 30 year that you invest the monthly note difference during years 1-15, and invest the full amount of the 15 year note from years 15-30.