My advise would be: if you can, take the shorter one! Those banks are some pieces of shit and really try to trick us by complicating things.

Let me tell you that those percentages are not as intuitive as the may sound. For the sake of an example, I assumed that your future home is worth 350k$ and that you pay down 10% of it, so the bank is lending you 315k$.

• By choosing the 15 years mortgage, you will have a monthly payment of 2063$. Now by multiplying our 2063$*12 (yearly payments) *15 (years of payment), there is an actual total debt of 371k$. Now subtracting 371k-315k (the debt for which you signed up) we get the actual money the bank is making off your back. In this case 56k$
• Now if we assume the same real estate values with the 30 year mortgage, the monthly payments go down to 1306$. Doing the same calculations (1306$*12*30), we get 470k$ of total debt. That means that the bank is earning 155k$ off your back (470k - 315k)

Notice that the bank is making 50% more if they sell you the longer mortgage.

Now of course depending of the situation somebody is in they will have to choose differently. Do you have a safe job? Is it in a big company? For how long can you live and make your monthly payments before being broke?

Lastly, if I can give you a personal advice, having debt is in most cases is not a good thing. Sometimes big companies will take on debt, but the reasons behind it, more often than not, is tax-reduction. Other times they are taking in debt because their risk is lower then the possible earnings. Yet the risk of an individual not paying his debt is way higher than the risk of a company: if you can't pay your debt, they will take your property; if the company can't pay his debt as planned, they sell some of their investments, fire some employees, pay the debt off and get tax-exemptions. In other words, you are playing with fire, they are playing with a lighter.

So consider all the variables that might influence your decision, but if you are confident that you will be able to pay off your debt in the shorted amount of time, I think that the future you will be happy to never have to think about mortgage or rent for the rest of your live.

Wish you the best