When it comes to paying off mortgages, from what I can figure, for a significant percentage of people, the benefits of maintaining a mortgage and investing surplus money elsewhere seem to become more pronounced after an extended period of time– say 8-10 years. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to accurately predict what will happen over an extended time period: one could experience a job change and have to move to a different region or state, inflation could spike, tax rates can change, your earnings may change, your tax bracket may change, capital gains rules can change, etc…. To accurately calculate the benefit (or detriment) of prepaying a mortgage, a large number of assumptions must be made over a long period of time- almost certainly one prediction will be inaccurate, and therefore it is unlikley that you can make an accurate prediction of the ultimate benefit of one course of action.

I agree wholeheartedly that reducing expenses is a valuable step toward financial independence. Furthermore, one way to look at inflation is to say "why pay down debt that will be diminished by inflation?" On the other hand, you'll always need housing, and thus paying it off may offer you some protection against many economic scenarios (inflation, deflation, stagflation, wage decreases, unemployment, underemployment, etc…).