@busdriver11 Would the insurance carrier who issued disability policy you purchased pay out the benefit you expect from this policy on top of your company’s disability plan which may pay out 60% of your income? Or would the benefit you are expecting from the policy you purchased be reduced or not paid out at all because of the company’s 60% payout? I was just wondering if you’re paying for something you may not get.
Lately I’ve been trying to figure out how I can do it on 500K. 
As usual, google knows all:
[Doubling up on disability insurance](Insurance - Car, Home & Life Insurance | Bankrate.com)
tl;dr answer is that private disability policies rarely have a coordination of benefits clause, group ones like through work will coordinate with gov’t payments like SS or workman’s comp, but not with other disability policies.
A couple of people listed things to do before retirement (deck, AC, etc.). Why before retirement? Wouldn’t you have more time to do it after retirement?
We are fixing one house to sell (the RE agents want the house to look like a Pottery Barn catalog) and working on the renovation of our new house. We will probably sell the old house before the new house is finished. If so, we may move up to Canada and live in a house that ShawWife and her sister co-own (we just knocked it down and rebuilt it). We will probably sell one of our rental properties on the East Coast and swap it (1031 Tax Free Exchange anyone?) with a property near our kids on the West Coast that we would rent out for now (and maybe use three months a year). We are beginning to feel like RE developers.
We do track expenses, but it sometimes hard to figure out what we are really spending and what we would spend in the future… Some things are paid for by my company (I’m the owner) and so are paid for out of pre-tax dollars. Plus, we often take vacations attached to my work trips (so many costs are covered by clients) or ShawWife’s residencies/shows (so tax deductible to her). If we retired, we’d be paying out of post-tax $$. My pre-tax savings has gone down a lot once I hit the cap on the DB benefit plan and now just max out the 401k. Pre-tax savings has to stop on retirement. Medical dropped with my switch to Medicare and will drop again but then it will only go up (unless we decide to move to my wife’s native Canada). Often people who retire travel more, but I don’t think we could travel that much more.
I think they mean “pay someone to do it”, not “do it myself”.
If you do it while you are still working, you have more income to cover the cost, and don’t have to dip into retirement savings to pay for it.
This seems treacherous. I think if you 1031-exchange into property for personal use outside of the IRS safe harbor (the personal use can’t exceed the greater of 14 days or 10% of the rented days) you risk having the exchange voided.
If I look at our water bill online, you can see a bar graph which shows usage by day. When my son left for college, there literally was a significant drop in water usage on the day we dropped him off. He took multiple long showers each day and washed all the clothes he even looked at. We remind him of this reality even today.
They probably assume the typical person or household who does not really know what their expenses are, but whose expenses approximate income minus some income and payroll tax (which is not as high a percentage of income for the typical person or household compared to the forum demographic).
Vanguard’s retirement calculator runs from $20,000 to $250,000 in terms of determining the percentage of pre-retirement income they think you need for retirement. Per the site below, $250k is top 5%.
https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/pubeducation/calculators/RetirementIncomeCalc.jsf
Our energy company sends a monthly piece of paper comparing our home to the average home and an energy efficient home with a line graph. Our home’s line always soared above the other two lines. Older son went to college two years ago but we still remained above. Twin sons left for college in August and DH and I dropped below the other two lines for the first time ever. Stayed that way until the Nov-Dec one and then the Dec-Jan one. As of last week they’ve all gone back to college and I will be happy to see us dip back down again.
Although typing this out makes me think I really need to see if we can opt out of that piece of paper. No wonder our energy bills are so high!!
Have you figured out the net price of on campus or near campus housing and food after subtracting the cost of utilities and food no longer being consumed at home?
@notrichenough, seems like interesting psychological accounting as you would have precisely the same total income whether you pay for it prior to retirement or after retirement. No obvious tax savings from doing pre-retirement as far as I understand it. Am I missing something?
RE the tax free exchange, we would have to limit to 14 days then. Thanks. Is there a minimum holding period before you can use the property for yourselves without undoing the prior tax advantage?
“Have you figured out the net price of on campus or near campus housing and food after subtracting the cost of utilities and food no longer being consumed at home?”
Aren’t these coming from the college fund and not the poster’s current monthly paycheck? 
It pays on top of the company benefit, and it’s tax free. It’s provided by our union, specifically for union members in the same job, so they are very careful to specify. I also read the fine print.
It’s probably unnecessary, but my odds of collecting it seem pretty high, unfortunately. Maybe something I should let go of, though.
It’s more of a cash flow issue I think. I feel like there’s a real reluctance to spend down savings once you hit retirement, and that’s what you’d be doing by waiting until after retirement. You are right it’s psychological.
Two years. And it has to be rented out at least 14 days/year at fair market rents…
It may be possible to do a 1031 exchange into 75% of a rental, but my research on this is mixed, and it seems like an aggressive thing to try, plus an accounting headache.
It’s also possible to get 1031 treatment outside of the safe harbor, but then the burden is on you to prove that you purchased it as an investment if the IRS comes knocking.
Caveat: I am not a tax professional, and as always, internet advice is worth what you pay for it. Make your lawyers and accountants earn their money. 
In terms of retirement (unless you will be retired with kids still in college), whether the utility costs at school partially or fully offset any savings at home (or even if on a combined basis, they are higher than they were when kid was still at home) doesn’t really matter to me. At some point, your kids will be on their own and paying their own utility, food, insurance, etc. bills leaving you with your reduced bills at home in your retirement (and in many cases years before retirement).
Sure beats taking no showers and not washing his clothes. Unfortunately, there are some young men like that.
Our company does that as well. We always look bad even with just 2 of us in the house, but we have a heat pump which uses more electricity and less fuel and we have plug-in hybrids, both which most of our neighbors don’t have. I don’t find it a very useful comparison.
Hmmmm, our electric company has never compared us to other households, but we tend to be low electrical consumers, even before we installed solar and photovoltaic. We were when we lived in the apartment as well.
We do notice spikes of power and water when our kids visit, but we don’t mind. We figure it’s because they have their electronics running 24/7–all the electronics they can coral in the house— those they bring and those they take over. Without them, it’s just H & me.
We also notice spikes of food bills—groceries and dining out when the kids are in town—makes sense to us.
Oh, the food bill definitely spikes when the kids are home! Also, often coincides with family celebrations and holidays so more expensive foods in general. But worth it.
Renting it out most of the year and then undertaking a three month remodeling project might be a plan. As long as you’re working on the property, who’s to question if you sleep there? After all, it’s perfectly rational for a visiting owner to try to save on lodging as they’re upgrading their investment property.