For us, it was kind of a perfect storm — we took on the mortgage believing that the interest deduction would help offset the cost of the mortgage. It didn’t, alas. You’re right — the standard deduction is larger, and so the “income tax” portion of our tax bill isn’t that large. The much bigger issue for us is the huge self-employment tax. I don’t fully understand why this is so, but once I realized we were very, very far from alone here, I wrote the article…my original title was more personal than the title Medium gave it here. :-) I am absolutely no expert — it’s why we have an accountant.