@jym626, I think it depends upon the purpose of the calculation. My calculation includes it, but if I was thinking about how much I have in the way of spare assets not including the place I’m living and hope never to have to sell, it might be sensible to leave it out. I had thought we might move either to Marin County, Boulder and environs or Calgary/Canmore or Vancouver, maybe combined with a residence in Florida. Some places would be more expensive and others would be less expensive. I would want to know what my total asset position was
I ran the net worth calculator with and without the personal home equity and came up with the same percentile…
How expensive one’s lifestyle is - in part where one lives and the type of taxes they have to pay on home, local and state.
Many people (like us) have over $1M in investment assets and can live quite comfortably to over 100 w/o running out of money.
I agree about not running out of money. Getting older/physically limited sucks enough w/o being poor. And our bodies do age. Key is trying to stay as healthy and as active as possible. Hopefully w/o problems like Dementia.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be amazing to be able to realistically have that target. I am pretty sure one of my best friends has assets in that general vicinity, but she talks about being worried they will run out of money. It baffles me.
We had a meeting with a financial planner last week. We live in a lower COL area of the country. Don’t have a second home, not an extravagant lifestyle. Less than some, more than lots.
Will be able to live with a bigger income than we have now and still leave almost the balance of our accounts that we have now to our heirs if we so choose.
I include the value of our house in our net worth because we might rent after I retire. The equity we take out of our house will be assets we can use to pay the rent or for any other expenses, same as any other assets. Even if we buy a new home it’s likely to be less expensive than our current home which is much larger than we need as empty nesters, so we’ll end up with some additional spendable money after sellling one home and buying another.
That might be the difference between counting the house value or not. If I were to sell my present house, it’s unlikely I would buy another for less. I’ve never made any money on a house yet, so it’s not something I would count on.
In fact, I would be hard pressed to find even a smaller house for what my house is worth. Especially once you add on carrying costs.
We had plans to sell the house and get something smaller until the pandemic hit. We find it easier to manage the stay at home with more space, a large deck, and park-like back yard. Now we are undecided. It will change our financial plan if we stay since we will have to plan for support services.
My in laws sold their house recently, after moving into assisted living. They are 92 & 93. They have always handled their own investments, and MIL is very proud of the dividends her stock portfolio generates. Now they suddenly have a large sum of money from the sale of the house, and they have no idea what to do with it. Between pension, SS, IRA & dividend payouts, they have plenty of money. FIL said he can’t find an advisor to help him determine what to do with the $250,000+ that they are currently parking in the bank. He talked to someone at the bank, but FIL wanted written guarantees regarding returns (which isn’t going to happen). I almost want to tell him to just put it in a money market account … he is so worried about losing it. I guess no matter how old we are or how financially comfortable we are, we never really stop worrying about money.
@jym626, we don’t count the value of our home in retirement assets. We figure we have to live somewhere.
@shawbridge, will you adopt me?
I would love to live in Marin County (born there) and one of our favorite places is the Banff/Lake Louise area around Calgary. (Boston and Florida I can live without).
Just wondering, since I tend to fall in the “ worry that enough isn’t enough” category, several folks have suggested that $5M safes for retirement is “enough” (assuming a comfortable
But not extravagant lifestyle). What about COL? Is that figured in? We could comfortably live on what we have/will have after we both retire if we stay here, but if we moved across country to be closer to the kids the COL will be MUCH higher. As an example, our house here is probably 2 1/2 x the size of DS#1’s house, but is worth more than twice what ours is. Crazy housing out there. As is the rest of the COL.
@MaineLonghorn, I love Maine also, but I think I would only want to live there between about May and October. We actually talked about the possibility of trying to get a small place there someplace near the shore, and then getting a place elsewhere for retirement. Not likely to happen, but I do see us possibly renting a place for several months. @jym626, I too “worry that enough isn’t enough.” I figure anywhere else we live we will want a house of similar value (or possibly a little more), so no sense counting it. I can totally relate to the size vs cost difference. I have (And had) family in San Jose, and the prices are absurd. I occasionally look at Zillow and see how much my great grandmother’s place in SF would be worth now. They turned it into 2 condos, worth well over a million each, and it wasn’t even a nice house.
