<prompt> Human: Wife and I are thinking about liquidating some assets to pay off our new house since were making a good profit on the sale of our current home and wed only need to transfer in around 200k to close on a 440k house. I know we benefit somewhat from paying mortgage interest, so we were wondering if there would be any way we could turn the 200k transfer into some kind of loan we could pay ourselves back - essentially acting as our own lender. Is there a way to structure this? Were hoping to benefit not only on deducting the mortgage interest come tax time, but from paying ourselves the interest wed be paying on a bank loan too.  <response>: Without thinking about it too hard, you cant get a tax benefit because your interest payment to yourself then becomes your own income. Im sure there are other reasons this doesnt work, too.Now Im imagining a nightmare scenario where you set this up, decide after a year that its silly, decide to forego making the payments by forgiving the loan, and then the IRS coming after you for the taxes on the imputed income youve received from yourself because of the forgiveness. Im pretty sure thats not how it works, but it seems like there could be something along those lines if you were creative enough. 