As another commenter said, inflation will eat away at the mortgage payment in real dollars. If inflation stays at 9% for the next year, 5%/year for the following couple of years, and 3%/year thereafter, and you get cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) that matches those, at age 67 your payments would drop from 50% of income today to 28%. Meanwhile, you get to deduct the interest, which helps reduce the impact on your take-home pay. As this happens, you'll be able to start setting aside more and more money each year. If you get actual raises beyond COLAs, things will improve even faster.