nun
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2006
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Here's an article about retirees and real estate
real-estate-nightmares-for-retirees-marketwatch: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance
It goes over the usual "to downsize or not" and "falling equity" stuff and then there is a nice bit that summarizes the two sides of the "pay down the mortgage or not" argument.
real-estate-nightmares-for-retirees-marketwatch: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance
It goes over the usual "to downsize or not" and "falling equity" stuff and then there is a nice bit that summarizes the two sides of the "pay down the mortgage or not" argument.
For his part, Amromin said it is difficult to think of a scenario in which paying down the mortgage would be advantageous. "Assuming refinancing is an option, current low interest rates should allow for a cheap way of financing the remainder of the mortgage, potentially generate tax deductions, and free up money for alternative investments," Amromin said.
Meanwhile, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College published a study in 2009 suggesting that all except a small minority of households are better off paying down their mortgage before entering retirement. In 2007, for instance, an increasing proportion of Americans were entering retirement with a mortgage. In fact, 41% of household aged 60 to 69 had a mortgage that year and, at least at the time, 51% had sufficient assets to pay down their mortgage. "These households could, if they wanted, be mortgage-free simply by selling some of their investments and mailing a check to the lender," Anthony Webb, the study's author, wrote at the time.