She’ll be fine
Dear Dave,
My mom is 76 years old and her only debt is $60,000 left on the mortgage. She has a $600,000 retirement account, as well as a long-term care insurance policy. But she only has $25,000 in money market account and offers daily bills and check writing privileges for purchases. Honestly, this worries me. She has been living within her own means, so am I worried that I was wrong? She has also been talking about paying off her mortgage and I’m not sure what I think about it. I like your comments very much.
Kelly
Dear Kelly,
You sounded surprised that she was still in the stock market at her age. In my opinion, this is not a bad thing at all. This may not be what a typical financial planner tells you to do, because in most cases they will try to keep you super conservative as they get older. But from the way you describe it, it sounds like she is not going to use the money, but the incomefrommoney. If so, she wouldn’t have reduced it all to nothing. So if her co-funding is good, not single stock, I think she would be good.
Now, let’s talk about mortgages. I definitely recommend her to continue to repay. If she could do that at 76 and had $540,000 left, that was the way to go. Let’s pay off the house and she can start deducting income from the remaining one hundred points. She doesn’t need to pay too much home payment because she won’t send money to the bank to pay the payment.
– Dave
The best plan
Dear Dave,
My wife and I have been talking about paying off the mortgage over the next two or three years. Do you think we should be by paying extra fees to the home or investing that money above 15% of what we are going to retire?
March
Dear March,
If I wear your shoes, I will pay extra on the house. On the other hand, you didn’t really do itBadThings to do by putting extra cash into retirement.
But this is a deal. No matter your plan, you never know what will happen in the next few years or in your investment life. You maythinkYou know. You may even believe that you have considered all possibilities. But hard and cold truths, even the best, smartest plans, are not always achieved in the way we think they will or we want them to be.
And if something unplanned or unforeseen happens, it is certainly a good thing to own your home freely and clearly, isn’t it?
– Dave
