@ucbalumnus that is true with the country quotas. My grandfather saw opportunity in the US and came - and then my mother followed after her apprenticeship to live with her dad. My dad saw limited opportunity and had an uncle who sponsored his brother and him – back then you also could not be a ‘burden’ on the US, and the sponsor was responsible to make sure you were not.
The paradigm is different now.
I have a friend who has gone through the legal channels to be able to bring her parents over to care for them if and when that time comes.
When one retires, thoughts also go to how one gets and receives care and continues QOL as one’s body and mind age and falter.
Wife’s family has been farming the same piece of land for over 300 yrs (since 1705). We built our home almost 40 yrs ago on a corner of this piece of land ourselves, with the help of my late father and late uncle. We are so sentimentally attached to this house and land there is no way in hell we are moving in retirement!! She is praying that one of our kids wants the house after we are gone.
My parents bought a house the day I graduated high school. It never felt like “my” house so I never became attached to it. My younger brother did live in it for 3 years of high school. His first year they still lived at the old house while they gutted and fixed up the other one, so for him it’s more his house. He used to say he wanted the house when they died. It’s old! Built in 1912. It’s big and nice, but a money pit considering the age. My mother also never really updated things through the years as she really just maintained things. I remember her not wanting to put granite counters in the kitchen when they redid it before they move in. Her reason was that she could replace the counters 10x with the amount that granite costs. Well, guess what? She still has the same formica counters! So, now it’s been 35 years they’ve lived there and my brother doesn’t want the house, I don’t want it, and thankfully it’s clean, but my parents have a ton of crap. Not hoarding type of stuff, but just chatzkes and stuff from entertaining. It’s a big house.
My point in all that is your wife better pray real hard they want the house and that it’s not just left for them as a problem to deal with, which is basically what my parents are doing to us. My parents should have moved years ago, but my mom refused. My father is almost blind and she has stage 4 lung cancer. They aren’t moving anywhere now. So they’re stuck, which means we’re stuck cleaning it out. My father has already said he isn’t moving unless he later moves to a place like “assisted” living, but he really means independent living and he views all those places as too small to him so wants to stay in the house as long as possible. Thank god there’s a caregiver but man it is tough. Whatever you do, just try to purge things out of your house so they aren’t all left for your kids to deal with.
@MADad I have a HS classmate that has bought land adjacent to family land owned by her/siblings that has been in family for a long time (further west, N IL). Her son (also high tech guy) helped do some work on the land and his feeling is with attachment to the land with his hard work. I think some siblings will buy out those that want to sell - if they can come to a meeting of the minds; majority needed to totally sell. Land is being leased out for crops. I have another high tech friend/HS classmate that has also bought a farm near our home town - his wife wanted to live near grandkids and he decided ‘happy wife happy life’. We all are 65 now (HS classmates).
Glad DH decided he is happy staying put in our N AL home. Once grandkids are further away, I may be spending a lot more time away. DH did a lot of national and international business travel with work, so he really needs to fill his ‘stay at home bucket’. I am on the retirement countdown with weeks instead of months…
That sounds like a challenge… too bad they don’t want to sell because this seems like the year of Seller’s Market, easier to unload a dated house. Someday we may need a thread to discuss options for parents wanting to stay in clutter-filled houses, trying to find home helpers and caregivers etc. I think it is a common scenario.
I know, right? The only problem here with a “dated” house is that no one can find contractors these days because they’re all so booked up. My house which isn’t really dated but I want to redo some rooms just because it’s time, like change stuff around in the bathrooms, etc. I am also just going to have to wait because everything and everyone are just backlogged. Fortunately I can afford to wait and am not that impatient but many others can’t.
Similar article I just read about cars. Such a hot market for any car, used or new. Going at list price and high trade ins. We have one leased car that it looks like we could buy out the lease pay off the car and own it and then turn around and sell it at a profit. Sounds nice but then we’d be short a car. In 2 months we could do it but we’d be forced to buy a car before Thanksgiving when the kids come back and not sure prices will come back then. We have one more year on this lease so hopefully by then we can get rid of one of the older cars and get something in place of the leased car at the same time. Guess we’ll have a year to figure that one out. I’m banging my head we didn’t buy a new car over the past year when no one else was, but at the same time, I wasn’t leaving my house either.
Or don’t purge much at all and hire estate sale professionals to handle it, we were surprised at the stuff that sold at my in laws home of 50 years. The guys running the sale told us not to throw anything away preparing for them, as they knew what was likely to sell.
Seems that the main thing about home equity is that if you have a paid-for house that you like by the time you retire, you are no longer renting the place (rental housing) or renting the money (mortgage), so your base housing costs are just property taxes, house insurance, maintenance, and utilities. That may make your cost of living considerably lower, even in an “expensive area” if the high costs there are mostly housing price related.
This by far is the recipe for retirement. And even better if you move from a high property tax area to a low one.
I like the idea of staying in our home long term. The taxes are reasonable, and the mortgage is paid off. However one factor to recognize/accept is that if the house were sold there would be investment income from the proceeds. That’s a more significant factor for folks in pricier areas. but still not a critical factor if there is adequate cash flow.
We are struggling with the stay or go (stay in paid off house or move to another state, mostly to help with taxes). The more I try to research taxes, the more I become convinced they are not that far off from one state to the other, unless you go to a state that has no income tax, and none of those states are on our list.
What we are trying to consider now, in addition to other things, is the taxes on pensions and social security. I feel like we need some kind of advisor to help figure this all out.
We are planning to stay in the home we bought in Jan 2020 as long as we can. We are selling an artist’s live/work studio that we were holding for two reasons. First, if we moved back in the city, so ShawWife would have a place to work (no longer relevant as we are not moving back into the city). Second, ShawWife had said that if I died first, she would move in there and have her artistic community. Our new house has an in-law suite (one large BR, one master bath, a small kitchen, a small-ish BR with a sensational view (could be an office or craft room) and another bathroom) with its own entrance that can be closed off from the rest of our house. It affords us to have one-floor living (the only room we use upstairs We converted that suite into our Master BR area. ShawWife says that, with the beautiful studio we built on the bank of a river just feet from our BR, she will stay here if I die, live in the MB Suite, and rent out the rest of the house.
We are also doing a significant renovation to update it (though it is pretty nice as is) but will make it a great place to live for the next many years. My activity at lunch between Zoom calls was to fill up a Nerf water gun and fire at the Canadian geese that are pushing our ducks away. They are newcomers – they just started showing up a month ago. Not sure this is anything other than a Sisyphian task, but ShawWife bought me a couple of these water guns for my birthday.
It may be good to get some kind of advisor to help you sort through the tax situations state to state. It’s a big decision, so you’d want to feel confident. If moving away would mean more travel expenses to visit friends/family, factor that in too (as well as the non-financial value of being near loved ones).
For other folks just starting the thought process, there are lots of good discussions online. Here are a few examples:
@somemom my brother found a good estate sale family group who did a very good job with my mom’s stuff. All of us siblings had very limited ‘choice’ of a few things - everything else ran with the estate sale. I ended up spending over $4k on items, and do wish I had gotten a couple of the silver marathon prize cups my grandpa won but I wasn’t keeping a total in my head (still under chemo TXs) - it turns out I would have liked to have given them to my uncle (who brother did not inform about mom’s death or the estate sale, and he lives not very far; he was a half brother from a later marriage). A few of the items were family heirlooms, or a very nice Persian rug (that I now use in my family room) - the persian rug I believe I got for $800. My mom had china stone setting for 16 that my sister wanted - she got it all for $50.
I think the estate people were a little surprised that more items were not held back from immediate family and went with the sale, but I had to go along with how brother and sister agreed to have it (they were executors of the estate).
@gpo613 I was shocked when my friends who indicated they were ‘downsizing’ to a townhouse ended up buying a place at higher cost and more sq ft than the house they had in another state. She insists it is a townhouse, but it is a detached house - they are responsible for the house and 4 ft away from the house; they pay $100/mo for grass cutting and snow removal by HOA. They moved from WVa to MN. Her H retired and she got her house in WVa looking super good - it sold a day after the open house with competing offers.
I have no idea on their thinking with such a big place, but they had time to look as they sold before they looked in the new area which they were familiar with. I suspect they will have it ‘neat’ looking as they really were selective in what they kept and stored in two places (one in new area and one in old area, as they were preparing in stages). It was built in 2004 but has upgraded kitchen that looks great. It doesn’t look like even the master has walk in closet, but lots of bedrooms and bathrooms. Finished basement and 2 stories. As soon as her older H can’t do stairs it will be trouble - all bedrooms are on 2nd floor or basement and only a 1/2 bath on main level.
What works for some of us, doesn’t work for all of us. I’m retired and my H is partially retired and our plan is to age in place and hope do what’s necessary to make it possible, i.e., pay for help to do stuff that gets too hard for us to do. So far, that’s meant hiring people to do the home maintenance we can’t or don’t want to do anymore.
My in laws are staying in their home. They are hiring what they can’t do and my husband and his brother help a little bit. It’s working out well for them. My mom is doing the same. Both say that they have to lower their expectations some. My expectations were never as high as theirs!
My sister in law, her parents sold their home and bought a condo. It’s very nice but is approximately twice the cost of my in laws home in the same town. Since it’s also on the water, the taxes are substantially higher. It’s works for them, they have the money barely but paid a lot to downsize and move.
It’s all about what you want to do and how much money you want to spend.
I would love to stay in our current house forever but I know it will eventually be impractical. Too many stairs, too much upkeep, and too much space. We’ll eventually downsize to a condo where it’s easy to lock up when we travel without having to worry about lawn, snow, etc…
I’m not interested in living in any of the tax friendly states but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it as we are still 15 years away from retirement.
Thanks. I have read some of those sources, but not all. I am talking to someone next week about whether I should do ROTH conversions. They know that moving to another state may be part of our plan, so I will talk about it at least a little.
Yea, timing on ROTH conversion (something we’ve been discussing with our financial planner) would also be a factor.
For longer term consideration, some couples will also want to think about cost of Care (in-home, assisted living, nursing home) in various areas under consideration.
