[Hugh R]

about 15 y/o I bought a house 2 houses off the beach in Silver Strand, Oxnard, Ca for $245K we wanted to keep it and rent it out for a few years and then rent is summer weeks for exorbitant amounts of monie. We ended up with a long term tenant. The $$ to make it a desirable summer rental were just too much. After 10 years we sold it cause I was like you working on my own and not knowing where next months mortgage for my principal residence was going to come from. We rented the beach house at a small loss year-to-year. My wife regrets selling it, as do I, but we took the profit from the sale and bought down our mortgate on our principal residence from a jumbo to a conventional and went from 25 years left on our mortgage to 15. Now I have about 9 years left on the loan on my house. The interest avoidance is about 360k that I won't be paying out as interest. In some ways I still wish I had the beach house, which has gone up a lot in value, but I can rent a similar or better beach house for a week or two in the summer for about what I was carrying the mortgage on my old beach house, without the liability and obligation. In my older years, and I don't think of my self as old (54) I'm trying to get rid of debt, not accumulate it. As others have said, you sleep better at night.