Investing 102

[67pro-street]

Another thing i am looking into is refinancing my home mortgage. With rates as low as 3% i did some math and figured out that if i can refinance @ 3% for 15 year fixed, i would be paying damn near the same monthly mortgage as my current monthly payments are on my 30 year fixed loan. Of course, prices are changing daily and i need to time it properly to lock my rate in a good percentage, but i just thought i would throw it out there since a home is also a long term investment and any money i can save on interest is money i can put into the market and hopefully get a higher return than 3%.

Which I guess this brings me to another point, and i apologize i know i can get long winded sometimes, but what is everyone's opinion on refinancing with another 30 year mortgage where maybe i am paying 300-500 dollars less per month than if i went with the 15 year refinance. My thought is to pay the min. payment for 30 years and take that 300-500 dollar savings and use it for investing. Not only does keeping my home loan help with tax returns, but i also know that i have a fixed 3% loss on interest for the next thirty years (i am just going to use 3% as an example even though that might not be the rate i lock into...). From what i have gathered so far, the stock market will generally have a ~7% RoR. so even though i am "losing" money by paying interest on my home loan that has been dragged out for 30 years, i know right now that the interest rate will always be 3% for the life of the loan. So if i take the money i save per month by having a 30 year loan as opposed to the 15 year loan and invest it, i can reasonably expect a higher growth than 3% on my investments AND i can afford to invest more money now, rather than later because my monthly mortgage payment decreased. So essentially, if what i am trying to say makes any sense at all then i would be making ~4% on my money ([7% RoR on stock market] - [3% interest payment on homeloan] = 4%) and i am doing so 15 years earlier than i would be if i went with a 15 year loan, right?? (i am ignoring salary increases or other forms of income when i say this...).

Once again, i apologize if this doesnt make sense and for being so long winded. Sometimes it is really hard to type what you are thinking in your head...