[Ophiucus]

In regards to a mortgage - as the value of the dollar plummets, isn’t it harder to pay off the debt? Other expenses would devour your budget before debt payments.

[Alberta's Child]

Actually, it's the exact opposite. In a true inflationary environment, wages and other income would rise at a level reasonably close to the rate of inflation. In fact, the rising wages are one of the key ingredients in inflation ... which is why outsourcing manufacturing to foreign countries with cheap labor -- for better or worse -- has a "deflationary" impact on living costs.

Think of it this way: If you have a $200,000 mortgage and you're paying it off over 30 years at a fixed rate of interest, your mortgage payment will never change even if the value of the dollar declines. Sure, the other things you purchase regularly will become much more expensive in an inflationary environment ... but it's THOSE things that become more difficult to afford, while your housing cost becomes a smaller and smaller portion of your overall living expenses. At some point you end up in a scenario like I described earlier in this thread related to the Freeper who declined to purchase a condominium. In that case, the mortgage payment on the condo wasn't much more than the property taxes!