One of the options I’m looking at now is to sell my existing car privately and lease an electric car. My belief is that the next 3 years will see dramatic changes in electric car offerings and electric car infrastructure like charging stations. Since I keep cars for a decade, I don’t want to lock in during a time of rapid change. Thoughts?
I agree about the electric cars. I told my husband the other day that our next new car will be electric. Thankfully we don't need one right now. I do think that is an area where there will be dramatic developments within a few years. If I had to buy a car right now I would probably get one with the plan to replace it in a few years. I haven't leased a car so can't comment so much on that.
On the Social Security aspect, I speak from the standpoint of someone who took SS at a few months shy of 63. So I do have a bias here.
People mostly fall within 3 groups on SS.
There are people who can easily afford to wait until 70 and have plenty of money to bridge the gap. They have plenty of money to cover all their spending needs and they have enough non-tax deferred money that they don't have to worry about the tax hit from major purchases. Or, they have so much tax deferred money that they don't care. If you are in this group, you probably know it.
There are people who can't possibly make it until 70 or even full retirement age, perhaps. They need the SS income to live on and they don't have enough savings to even think about funding waiting. These people either need to take SS before 70 or need to gain some other income such as from continuing to work. Most people in this group, know it. Furthermore, most people are in this group.
The final group are in the in-betweeners. They can retire but defer SS by withdrawing money from their investments whether tax-deferred or not tax-deferred. So, technically, they could be in group 1. But, they don't have so much money that they won't miss what gets withdrawn to cover those years. They worry about depleting their funds to a point that they would not be comfortable with. They may have most everything in tax-deferred funds and every major purchase they have to make generates a taxable event.
FWIW, we fell within this group. I didn't like the idea of depleting the nest egg that much. I worried about unknown future expenses. I didn't want to feel that I would have to abruptly making a taxable withdrawal for some major expense. Our money was mostly in tax deferred vehicles. So I elected to take SS early. As things have played out, I am glad I did it this way.
If you feel you fall within group 1, then I would just go get a low interest car loan if I wanted a new car right now. We actually did that when we bought our new car in 2018. We put down the large down payment that we could make from our existing cash. I did not want to withdraw money I would have to pass tax on. We paid on the loan for almost 2 years and then paid it off when the taxes worked better for us. No regrets.
