athena53
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- May 11, 2014
- Messages
- 7,415
This string is why I have no problem including 10 -20% of our home equity in our financial projections. If we live to 70-75, we’ll certainly sell this place and move to something smaller and less expensive. It makes a meaningful difference for portfolio survivability, too.
10-20% is pretty conservative but when DH and I downsized I'd say we pretty much broke even. The new house IS smaller than the one we left and cost about $50K less, but that was eaten up by:
-Moving expenses
-$26K to enclose the back porch
-Difference in quality (architect's original on a small lake vs. cookie-cutter McMansion)
-Had to replace the HVAC within the first year- system was 20 years old so we knew it was coming but not that soon.
We also realized that we wanted some room for DS and DDIL to visit- they live 3 hours away. They now have 3 kids and were just here a few weeks ago. You could argue the case that buying a smaller house and putting them up in a motel on their occasional visits would have cost less but I LOVE those little smiling faces looking for their blueberry pancakes in the morning!
No regrets at all and the carrying costs on this place are far less, but there wasn't much left from the equity in the previous house after the dust settled.