By Constance Carter
Wealth Advocate
Einstein called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world. Those who understand it earn it. Those who do not pay it. That is why the Trump administration is floating a 50-year mortgage. They are betting that we will not see the true cost.
He, him, and they are framing this as a path to affordability. But let me show you what it really is.
Let’s look at the math for a $420,000 home at 7 percent interest.
30-year mortgage:
Payment: $2,792 per month
Total interest: $586,332
50-year mortgage:
Payment: $2,527 per month
Total interest: $1,095,029
You save about $265 a month but pay an extra $508,697 in interest.
Half a million dollars.
That’s not a discount. It is a trap. Stretching a loan across five decades hands banks hundreds of thousands of dollars that will never circulate through our families or build our wealth.
The numbers don’t lie.
The median age of a first-time homebuyer in 2025 is 40, according to the National Association of Realtors. If a 40-year-old signs a 50-year mortgage, they will not own their home until they are 90.
Ninety years old.
You will be renting from a bank for half a century. This is not what the 30-year mortgage was designed to do.
When the 30-year mortgage gained popularity in the 1950s, the average home was priced around $7,354, and the typical interest rate was about 4 percent. One income could support a family and pay a mortgage. The mortgage system we are being asked to trust today was never designed with our interests in mind.
From 1934 to the 1960s, the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages for Black families, calling it an “economically sound” policy. This helped establish the red lines on maps that labeled Black neighborhoods as “too risky.” Even Black veterans who served in World War II were denied access to GI Bill home loans that helped white families build generational wealth.
Black families were just as qualified to buy those affordable homes but were denied access.
White families purchased homes for $7,000 in the 1950s that are now worth $300,000 to $400,000. That appreciation built the white middle class. Black families were locked out by design.
If they move forward with the 50-year mortgage plan, working-class Black families in particular will feel the impact first, depleting the wealth we have accumulated despite all the barriers we’ve faced.
Prices are high. Rates are high. Affordability is at its lowest point in decades. We need two incomes, side hustles, credit stacking, and divine intervention to compete with institutional investors and inflated housing prices.
A 50-year mortgage does not solve this. It expands the burden by creating the illusion of affordability and traps people in a cycle of debt for life.
Think about retirement.
The average Social Security check is about $1,900 a month. Even if the program still exists in its current form by the time today’s buyers reach retirement age, how will they manage a $2,500 to $3,000 mortgage and still afford food, medicine, and basic living costs?
A 50-year mortgage pushes Black homeowners into a future where retirement is impossible, which is its own form of bondage. Bondage is debt you cannot escape. Bondage is owing a bank money until the day you die.
The data on Black wealth is already alarming. A report from Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies predicts that by 2053, the median wealth of Black Americans will fall to zero if trends do not change. A 50-year mortgage moves us closer to that outcome.
The legacy of housing discrimination still shapes today’s wealth divide. What we need is access, not more years added to a loan.
The real solutions are clear:
- Affordable housing construction.
- Lower interest rates.
- Higher wages.
- Down payment assistance.
- Regulation on hedge funds buying entire neighborhoods.
- Stronger consumer protections against products disguised as opportunities.
A 50-year mortgage solves none of this. It solves one thing for banks. Profit.
Family, do not make decisions today that will bankrupt your future. Before you sign a 50-year mortgage, ask yourself:
Will I still be paying this when I am supposed to be retired?
Will this help me build equity or delay it?
Will this protect or drain my family’s wealth?
A mortgage should be a path to ownership.
We cannot build generational wealth on a foundation of generational debt.
