Did you stretch your budget to buy your dream home in retirement?

[Closet_Gamer]

Interesting thread and common topic with DW.

We like to travel but I'm always aware that a home is "enjoy it every day" or "don't like it every day" kind of thing. If one can keep from going over board (granite everything) then I tend to be personally OK with home spending. I don't kid myself into thinking that the money spent is an investment...its consumption that may be blunted a bit by some appreciation in the house.

We're still a ways out from FIRE so who knows what we'll actually do, but I'm inclined to own a house we're happy to wake up to each day.

 

[Sanstar]

We bought a new to us Airstream 25 foot travel trailer two years before I retired. One year before retiring, we bought our retirement house. Cash for both and for the new TT tow vehicle. I much prefer the TT to a vacation property since it's a lot easier to relocate if we don't like the site for any reason such as weather, neighbors, or need a change of scenery. Plus, TT is key to our zombie apocalypse bug out plan for housing. We had a cement pad and electrical connection added to retirement home so TT also serves as overflow housing for family gatherings. Like Closet_Garner, I don't consider any of these investments.

 

[kimcdougc]

We bought a new to us Airstream 25 foot travel trailer two years before I retired. One year before retiring, we bought our retirement house. Cash for both and for the new TT tow vehicle. I much prefer the TT to a vacation property since it's a lot easier to relocate if we don't like the site for any reason such as weather, neighbors, or need a change of scenery. Plus, TT is key to our zombie apocalypse bug out plan for housing. We had a cement pad and electrical connection added to retirement home so TT also serves as overflow housing for family gatherings. Like Closet_Garner, I don't consider any of these investments.

+1

 

[RobLJ]

NV, would be a good choice as I don't like to gamble and I do like the climate.

I would shoot myself if I were in Las Vegas, but I love Reno--we hike the Sierras and I like to fly-fish and ski. Gambling, not so much. I grew up going to the Western slopes of Colorado as a yewt in summers at my granddad's cabin, and Reno is not too far from that experience, just lower down and hotter in summer. (This summer has set records for heat--but not like Las Vegas. But it's a dry heat--not anything compared to Houston.) To each his/her own.
We might consider a cabin in the future in the upper elevations in Oregon or Washington for us and the yewts--sold the Colorado cabin as it was too far away when we moved to Reno from Houston. Amazingly most of our friends in Houston have weathered the storm fine, although one got an inch or two of water in her house (to be off-topic). Glad I'm not in Houston anymore.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

Did you stretch your budget to buy your dream home in retirement?. Yes. I went for my lungs.

 

[OnIslandTime]

We bought our dream house almost 2 years ago. All in all (after we finished some things and completely furnished it) it cost us more than 3 times the value of our current house (which we paid off this year). Finding a way to make that dream come true (no more winter and live where we always travel to anyway) was what has really pushed us to get on to FIRE. We are retiring to a lifestyle that just doesn't exist where we live now (midwest); we can walk to the beach, bike to the grocery store, and lounge at our own lake view pool every day of the year. Other than a cruise the year our DD graduated from college, we've spent every vacation there for the last 17 years.

Buying the place was a lucky break, we got an unsolicited offer on a rental condo that we owned there (also worth more than 3 times our current house) and after counter-counter-counter-counter offers we made out like bandits! We put all the take from that into the dream house (finding it was also a lucky break). While the purchase of the house wasn't a stretch, the mortgage is not huge and it is fixed; the property taxes and the insurance will be a sizable chunk of our budget and will obviously grow over time.

We estimated when we were buying it that it could take us 3 or 4 years to actually retire and get to live there. It motivated us to do the actual planning and we'll probably be retiring early next year.

We could have bought a very nice larger house for less money more inland, but then we would not have gotten the lifestyle...it would have been just a house in a subdivision. If we ever get tired of walking on the beach, biking to the grocery store, and swimming next to the lake, we can always sell the house and move to just a house in a subdivision or a condo or whatever.

 

[flintnational]

We went the other way. We sold the lake house (our primary residence) and moved to a much smaller, lower maintenance house the same month I retired. But our plan was to travel. We may consider a more expensive, higher maintenance property when we tire of travel. But, that hasn't happened. Unless you are certain about what you will want to do in retirement, you might want to wait on the dream home and see what your lifestyle is like. It may change what you want.

FN

 

[ElizabethT]

1) Forget about buying waterfront property and just get a nice regular house and have plenty of cushion during retirement
2) Buy my dream house but be more careful about spending and know there is always a chance I would have to go back to work if things don't go as planned
3) Work another year or so to get some more cushion and buy the dream house

Only one person's opinion, but having recently purchased our dream home at a price point of 150% of our prior home, we are still pinching ourselves daily that we actually went through with it, and that we now live in what we consider paradise.

So having said that, personally I would go with Option 3). It would have been extremely unfortunate (sad?) had we not had the chance to proceed and purchase our dream home (Option 1) ), and I would not have been comfortable with Option 2 in that we would not have slept as well as night(!).

I would caution you, however, to make sure you understand how buying your dream home will affect your bottom line run rate. In our case, after three months of living in our new home we have had no surprises in that we did detailed research and analysis ahead of time. We ran and reran the numbers, including impact on upkeep costs, insurance, utilities and property tax, and knew we were comfortable with the 'after' effect to our budget.

 

[trirod]

OP here with an update. We did buy our retirement home. It has a good view of the lake and shared waterfront with the other houses in the development. Quite a bit cheaper than our own private waterfront, but I can still see us using the beach and the lake a lot this way (we are keen swimmers and kayakers).

It was still about twice the price of our current home but I think it will be well worth it. We close tomorrow!

 

[RockyMtn]

We bought our dream home in retirement but actually went from 2 homes to 1 so the net effect was to put about $500k in equity into our pockets!

 

[Scuba]

OP here with an update. We did buy our retirement home. It has a good view of the lake and shared waterfront with the other houses in the development. Quite a bit cheaper than our own private waterfront, but I can still see us using the beach and the lake a lot this way (we are keen swimmers and kayakers).

It was still about twice the price of our current home but I think it will be well worth it. We close tomorrow!

Congratulations and enjoy your new dream home! [emoji322]