Okay, this is special. Welcome to the Better Off Bonus Bonus of the Week.

Usually we have a podcast that airs on Thursdays, a longer form, we do an interview followed

by one of your questions. Tuesdays, we usually drop a listener question of the week, but it's

the weekend and Mark is hell bent on getting that email inbox

cleaned out. So we thought that until we could do so, maybe we'd throw a little

extra into your feed and start answering some questions.

Today we've got a question from Terry who says that I love the show.

I don't know if Terry's a man or a woman.

So Androgynous Terry loves the show.

I am an attorney for New York City.

I make $143,000 a year, good position.

I'm thinking of switching jobs to a lower salary of approximately $110 to $125, so I can ultimately achieve my goal of becoming

a judge in five to ten years.

That's cool.

I was thinking of paying off my mortgage $40,000 before then and have approximately $100,000 cash in

non-retirement accounts to do it.

I'd love to get your take on this.

Okay, first of all, do not pay off the mortgage. You need some

flexibility. There's no reason to pay off the mortgage unless you're going to tell me

you for some reason have a 10% mortgage, which I highly doubt.

If anything, I would keep that mortgage while you're making less money because you might

need the flexibility of having that pile of cash on hand.

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