48 with 10 year horizon! hopefully... And an idea for retirment home!

Months.in.Wyoming

Dryer sheet aficionado
Joined
Jul 22, 2011
Messages
38
Location
St. Louis
But - wanting to retire at 58 (when the last of my college bills will be paid).

Current retirement savings in liquid / retirement accounts - 900,000.00.

Investment property $1 million (with debt of 400,000).

College savings - $200,000.00. First kid goes to school couple years, then the next follows, then the third three years later. This will likely be completely depleted by college costs.

Small business value - $6,700,000.00 ($500,000,000 revenue business I own a part of). It's liquid as the buy sell agreement purchases over 5 year period. Can sell at any time. Have sold $1,000,000 already.

My idea is that instead of spending 1-2 million on a retirement home... Why not keep the primary residence and just rent a home in the mountains and a home on the beach for 3 months at a time. Keep the 1 million invested to return 5% a year... Then rent a like property for 6-8k per month (48 k per year for six months living)... Have rooms enough for kids families and visitors, have a great location, but have NO property tax, upkeep, real estate risk, etc.
 
My idea is that instead of spending 1-2 million on a retirement home... Why not keep the primary residence and just rent a home in the mountains and a home on the beach for 3 months at a time. Keep the 1 million invested to return 5% a year... Then rent a like property for 6-8k per month (48 k per year for six months living)... Have rooms enough for kids families and visitors, have a great location, but have NO property tax, upkeep, real estate risk, etc.

Welcome to the board - from a fellow citizen of the city with the best pizza and frozen custard! ;)

While I'm 13 years behind you on the calendar (and a little farther back on the balance sheet status), I'd always strongly recommend pursuing renting a second/third place for a short stay instead of outright buying it. There are so many additional headaches and expenses with having 2 or 3 places to keep track of, instead of simply showing up, enjoying the place for 4 months, then packing the bags and leaving your worries at the doorstep...real estate taxes, utilities, yard maintenance, constant worry of someone breaking in, insurance costs...and not to mention furnishing a 2nd or even 3rd place! And you can even try out different areas each time if you want, or even try a completely different idea (like a trip/cruise one year) if you wish.

Of course, if you WERE going to buy a place, the current real estate market would be the right time to make that decision - but, unless you happened upon a situation where you could get a home for 10-20 cents on the dollar, it probably wouldn't be that advantageous once you add in all of the expenses and opportunity costs of not investing the money.
 
With that amount of $$ you can do almost anything you desire and make several mistakes along the way! Congratulations! Remember the little people :)
 
Welcome aboard, sounds like a great plan!

Our plans are a little more modest, but we've also decided to buy a modest retirement home (much less than we can afford) in an overall effort to keep our fixed expense spending low. If the economy/returns do well or even as we conservatively plan for, our variable expense spending will be pretty high - maybe renting or extended vacations with very nice accomodations.
 
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After having a 2nd place for a few yrs, and more recently crunching numbers again for myself, gotta agree with MooreBonds. A 2nd home makes no $$ sense for most situations. FWIW- My DW's parents lived in their Midwest home at retirement but visited same area in SW for 2-3mo/yr for 15+yrs. Over the yrs they developed a whole group of "SW friends" & enjoyed much of the social benefit of 2nd home without the financial & bureaucratic hassle.
 
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