For couples who have a large age gap:
"Reduce withdrawals
At 70½, you have to start taking money out of an individual retirement account. If your spouse is more than 10 years younger, you can reduce the required withdrawals — and stretch your savings — by using the IRS’s joint life expectancy table to calculate the amounts."
DH is 7 years older. Some things are easier for retirement planning that if we were same age. But some things are harder. The good thing is that I have my own SS, so less guesswork there.
Where are my savvy real estate people? We would like to become more diversitifed in our portfolio with some real estate investments. We do NOT want to flip or manage properties. Do we want to be investors/private lenders/crowd sourcers for syndicates?? Not exactly sure - this is NEW territory for us, and I am not up on all the lingo or possibilities. What is the best way to learn about and get involved in this? FWIW, we would qualify as accredited investors (that’s one term I have learned). I know bogleheads is mentioned here often. I found a website called Bigger Pockets that seems to be the equivalent for real estate, but goodness it’s overwhelming. To be fair, I’m sure CC was to me at one time as well. I can’t figure out which forum to go to to ask questions. So much of it seems to be devoted to people who are trying to FIND investors. What is the best way to get into this coming from the other side of the equation - AS an investor? How do you find “good” people? Briefly looking through some message boards on the Bigger Pockets site, there are often suggestions for those looking for investors to join a local REIA. I have found one, but I am not sure I understand the function? They meet at a local Hooters once a month??? I get the sense that the purpose is to network, but commingling beer, wings, and real estate investing seems a bit risky to me!!
What is a reasonable % of our assets to invest in this? What is a realistic and attainable rate of return? Is this a good thing for a newly (and relatively youngish on the spectrum of retirement ages - we are mid-50’s) retired couple to look into for diversification? What sort of risk tolerance does this type of investing mesh with?
Thanks in advance for any guidance anyone can offer on how to learn, do research, and get started!
@Hoggirl, what part of the country do you live in?
@Hoggirl So interesting that you mention “Bigger Pockets”. The “president” of BiggerPockets is the same age as my oldest. They went to middle school school together and played on some sports teams together through high school.
Looking at the BiggerPockets “about us” page, it appears that this is a very young group of people to be giving resl estate advice. The president, at least, would have still been in high school at the time of the last real estate crash.
I hope you take the time to get to know some more seasoned real estate investors in person.
@eastcoascrazy - thanks for the info! I would love to get to know some more seasoned real estate investors in person - I just don’t know how to go about doing that! That’s what I’m trying to figure out 
We relocated with our retirement six months ago, so we are new to our current area as well. We have personal friends here but not business connections/ties.
How interesting about the age of that group! I will keep that in mind. I have spent all of about ten minutes glancing though it. Was trying to see if it was a place to devote more time.
@Hoggirl our financial planner recommended a similar idea a few years ago. We took a watch and wait approach and now, from what we have seen, margins on those investments have shrunk.
DH has invested our retirement vehicle in commercial real estate, to brilliant effect. But he absolutely knows what he is doing as he has been in the business for 35 years.
Have you looked at REITs? There are REITs that specialize in almost every aspect of real estate - apartments, commercial, senior/retirement, hospitality, manufactured/rv, financial (mortgages, etc), shopping centers, storage, health care, you name it. So you can invest in the area(s) you think will do the best, or there are ones that take a more generalized approach.
Some of them spit out pretty healthy dividends and have had good capital growth as well. And they are completely hands-off.
My advice would be to never invest your retirement money in an industry you do not understand through and through.
If you have money that is superfluous to your retirement, just go ahead and use it for travel or donate to charity.
@Nrdsb4 - we are in Florida
@“Snowball City” - ha! No - we do not have money superfluous to our retirement. Wouldn’t that be lovely! We would like this money to generate some additional cash flow for us.
@notrichenough - I am familiar with the acronym and what it stands for but know nothing about them nor how one I finds and invests in them.
@“Snowball City” - our guess our thinking was perhaps we could find someone who did know the industry through and through who needed capital. But maybe those that do, already have enough money and don’t need more.
People thought that Bernie Madoff knew what he was doing…
@hoggirl - REITs are publicly traded as stocks. You can also get mutual funds/ETFs that concentrate in REITs. For example, Vanguard has a REIT ETF (symbol VNQ)
As for finding them - there are newsletters devoted to them, there are indexes that track the industry as a whole, magazines like Forbes and Money run articles all the time about them, if you have a brokerage account the “research” portion (or whatever they call it) will probably let you screen for them.
I googled “best REITs to buy” and articles like this from Forbes show up:
[4 ‘Strong Buy’ REITs That Should Outperform](4 'Strong Buy' REITs That Should Outperform)
or
[The 5 Best Real Estate REIT ETFs of 2018](Best REIT ETFs)
I have an REIT that is Vanguard mutual fund. It doesn’t produce income. It’s doing ok and is my ROTH IRA. It doesn’t sound like what you’re interested in.
@BunsenBurner - true!
We need to learn more and are trying to figure out how to do that.
One other thought - if you are going to try to become a direct player, it’s essentially running a business. Since you have recently retired, is this really something you want to take on?
One story about being an investor - way back when we started buying rentals, we had the opportunity to join a syndicate run by a guy doing a condo conversion of an old school. Invest in chunks of $50K, with the developer putting in about 50% of the money, then in 6 or 9 months when the condos sold you could make 10-15% or more.
We got the paperwork and I thought it looked pretty good. We had a lawyer with some experience look it over, and he pointed out two things that were buried in the fine print that I didn’t catch:
So the investors were bearing virtually all the risk, while the developer got most of the upside. Great investment, right?
We passed on it. The developer had a track record, but we thought it was too one-sided.
The moral is, you have to be very careful if you go into investments like this, there are a lot of sharks out there.
Whoa, NRE! Way to rip off your partners. Depending on the state laws and how the whole deal was set up, those clauses may or may not be enforceable, but the only way to find out that would be by tossing $$$ at a lawsuit. Good use of the lawyer’s fee.
Wouldn’t buying real estate investment trust (REIT) stocks or mutual funds of them be a way to get some real estate exposure without managing actual properties?
Remember that if you own a house, you may have substantial investment in real estate. If you have a large mortgage on it, it is also highly leveraged, with potential for large gains or losses relative to the equity you have in it.
I wouldn’t recommend investing in REITs at this stage. In 2009, maybe, but not now, unless you were a VERY knowledgeable real estate professional and can handle the ups and downs of the housing, and or commercial real estate markets.Too Many REITS still invest , or have investments in retail [ stores and malls] property, and because America is ridiculously overdeveloped in retail square footage and many retail operations , as well as the malls they are located in ,are continuing to close their doors, the commercial retail market is in bad shape, and there is no end in sight to the pain.