Listen to him. You will save so much more money this way (see first three years of amortization schedule below). As far as deploying goes, make sure you call USAA if you have car insurance with them and they will put your car on a storage policy for like $20/month. Tell them when you plan on getting back and it will revert back to the original policy automatically. If you don't plan on driving your car, buy a small trickle charger like this: Battery Maintainer and hook it up to keep the battery fully charged and ready. These also work great for motorcycles. Also, great neighbors are invaluable, take good care of them.
150,000 house, 5% interest, 30 year fixed
Year Interest Principal Balance
2011 $7,449.74 $2,213.05 $147,786.95
2012 $7,336.52 $2,326.27 $145,460.68
2013 $7,217.50 $2,445.29 $143,015.39