I have never posted on this thread but read it often and appreciate the wealth(pun intended) of knowledge. My parents retired to the South years ago and have just last week relocated to DE to be closer to my family. They have preached and saved to not ever be a financial burden to myself or my brother. I have learned a lot about estate planning and all the ins and outs of long term care through them, and to say it’s daunting is an understatement. DH and I had our children relatively young 24/26 and always focused very much on long term savings, so I feel like we are in a very good position for retirement and beyond. However sometimes it seems there is never enough for all unforeseen circumstances. DH wants to retire at 55 (I think 59.5 is more realistic) and while I am not sure we could really swing that, it is certainly fun to think about. My father’s health has been poor from about 67 onward which has made me keenly aware that you never know the time you have to really enjoy retirement.
Informative article in WSJ. Free link.
Any feedback from others on Schwab website?
I don’t like the online interface we use for the funds for the Schwab funds with our financial planner. The problem may be the way we have our funds divided up. Also, there seems no simple summary of gain/loss (need our own spreadsheet)… seems clearer on Raymond James and Fidelity sites/statements I’ve seen.
Our planner is at Schwab and we go over the statements (by phone) every quarter. He sends us a pdf (several pages) and we go through it line by line. That works for us.
I had a terrible experience with Fidelity and will never use them.
If you plan to retire soon and are thinking about getting a HELOC, do the latter first! Banks are tightening lending to retirees (as some of us have discovered here!).
Sounds like their loan did get approved, they just needed to go through a few more hoops. And the mortgage loan officer needed to look more thoroughly than the automated software.
So it wasn’t that they couldn’t get a HELOC, they needed to verify their income.
Yes, but this particular couple had to reach out to the head of the credit union. This is just one example but it illustrates how banks can treat retirement income streams differently depending on the source. People also seem to question why someone like them with $500k in investments would even need a HELOC. Well, they might have a good reason… maybe they don’t want to bump their income up, maybe they have money in a company that’s going to be acquired (so makes no sense to sell now) or they want to avoid short term gains… people can have valid reasons!
Good points. @busdriver11 seemed to have the same problem.
Haha, it looks like bus and I are cross posting
Same thing with us. It took 4-5 months to get our HELOC, because the credit union was sickeningly slow. And we retired in the process. Even though we had a good pension, very low LTV and high assets, initially the loan officer claimed they no longer would be able to give us this loan. After some cross words, it was submitted to the board, which was finally approved, another delay. Of course, we haven’t used their stinking 8% rate loan yet, thankfully!
Moral of the story, try to apply for credit before you retire if you can.
Funny, I knew I had posted that story somewhere!
I’m still so irritated!
Boo to those slower than molasses lenders!
Well, it made “sense” in this instance because they listed $35k in annual income while asking for a $50k HELOC. And while it says they had “retirement accounts” of $3M, it notes they’re under age for accessing them (apparently not diving into whether or not any of those funds were Roth), and yes, they “only” had a brokerage account worth $500k, which (rightly) isn’t counted in the same way as $500k in cash by a lender. I can see why they were surprised! But the denial makes sense on the initial pass.
But! I completely agree that anyone coming up on retirement absolutely should line up any loans that they may be planning on while they have W2s in hand, and to also get their credit card situation set up along with (higher) credit limits on said cards.
Even if you use just one card in your day to day life (for points or other reasons), it’s essential to have 1-2 cards as backup in case your card is lost, stolen, or needs to be blocked for fraud. Yes, you can open new credit cards in retirement, but it’s more hoops to jump through than when you have W2s and they’ll often start you with low credit limits (which aren’t all that useful in case of emergency).
We just got a Costco credit card. Talked into it when we renewed our membership.
No more issues getting it than any other credit card we’ve applied for.
Been retired going on 2 years now.
I got a HELOC just prior to retirement in 2021. Not that I feel like using it, given the interest rates, but happy to have it sitting there. I just got a new airline CC as well. No issues aside from a fairly low spending limit. It is ok, I have others.
So on ‘budgeting’ with retirement, and considering inflation, a NY Times article just ran with home maintenance costs under their real estate section. Report came from Thumbtack information (online platform connecting homeowners to handymen and contractors). For those that don’t have access, the annual range went from $3192 to $8641 (Los Angeles as the highest cost city and Las Vegas as the lowest cost city on these maintenance costs). They also gave figures for year over year percentage change on costs. They showed the top 15 cities and the lowest 15 cities in the article. Los Angeles costs went up 19.6% from prior year. They analyzed 40 big cities and 100,000 maintenance jobs, specific with home maintenance work. They also said the average for single family home maintenance was $6409 with 9% cost increase from prior year, and townhomes had 4% cost increase, while condos had < 2% cost increase. Article also talked about weather extreme areas which have higher home maintenance costs.
I can see this with my own home maintenance costs. Lawn mowing raised his price this year, Pest control guy raised his price this year, gutter cleaning raises his price every year, etc. They all seem like small increases but they add up (especially for things which are done weekly - like the mowing).
We just had something come up within our community with home property tax assessments over the last few years. Typically our homes have been well under valued as far as property taxes go from the Tax Assessor Office. Well last year their fair market value for our home (and in area homes) was much higher, but below what our home was with a professional assessment. We refinanced our home mortgage and had a professional appraisal done Feb 2022 using a value approach. We received our 2023 post card with the County Tax Assessor fair market valuation, and it had gone up over $50,000 from the prior year, and $25,000 over our professional appraisal. I did have our appraisal in a digital form (sent to us by our credit union where we had our new mortgage). A day after I emailed in our home appraisal along with stating that we do not agree with the higher fair market value the Tax Assessor office had set for 2023, they responded with a revised 2023 fair market value about $5,000 less than our appraisal. We accepted their revision which closed out our ‘protest’ (their words). “If no response is received, an appointment with the Board of Equalization will be made.”
We live in a lower property tax rate state, and being 65 and over, we get a property tax discount (1/2 plus $50), however the property fair market value for taxation needs to be kept in check.
I heard from a local friend that the tax assessor office had new people in their office who have adjusted fair market valuation closer to what is going on in our area – more up to date. When I phoned the tax assessor office, I was told that their fair market value for taxation can go down as well as go up depending on the fair market value for that year. I find it highly unlikely an individual or even an area fair market taxation rates have ever gone down in my state – and my DH concurred as well about how highly unlikely that would be.
Most people would not pay for a professional appraisal just to challenge the tax assessor’s fair market valuation unless their tax savings for the year or for two years would cover the cost of the professional appraisal.
One factor in relocating/downsizing in our future will be on property taxes - and the stability of the community. A growing mid-sized city can have rising home values, rising infrastructure costs, and the rising property taxes. Sure would love to have the 65+ property tax discount wherever we eventually land, but I imagine that is not common (but IDK about that, I need to ask my real estate friends).
I know in WI my parents’ area had a jump in property tax rate when you got above a particular size of a home, including garage area. My dad as a builder, made sure their home fell just below that tax rate jump (they sacrificed some in their garage space) - the tax assessor remeasured the home three times! Really wanted that bump up in the taxes!
Oh man, I don’t know. Right now we’re scheduled to go to my niece’s wedding in another country. It’s gonna cost us around 6K. All that for a one day event (though we’ll stay an extra couple of days since we’re out there. Full day of travel each way. If we weren’t retired, the money wouldn’t be a consideration, but now it is. And she’s already married, this is one of those get married in a small celebration one year, and the big wedding the next year (immigration issues).
I’d hate to cancel, but that’s an awful lot of bucks for retirees at a one day event! What would you retirees do?
Send them my best and go out to dinner in your own town in honor of them that night! Retired or not if not my own kids, there is not anyone I would spend $6k to see get “married”!
Same here. We just don’t do destination weddings. Except for our son’s this summer. 
@abasket gives good advice.
If you haven’t already sent a gift, perhaps a small portion of that “travel” money could fund an extra nice one.