Posts Tagged with utilities
Here are some ways your home can help you retire, thanks Tara @ Trulia for this wonderful article, enjoy!
6 Ways Your Home Can Help You Retire
Once upon a time (i.e., 2006) in a magical place called the Bay Area, the real estate market got so heated that it became commonplace to hear coffee shop patrons trading stories about their little old million-dollar houses. It became equally commonplace for this excess of home equity to create a false sense of financial security, causing many a homeowner to save less for the future than they might have otherwise. This practice was just as inadvisable as it was common, as evidenced by a retirement planner’s primely located billboard at the time, which read:
“My house is worth a million dollars” is NOT a retirement plan.
But many people treated it like it was, to their detriment.
Relying upon your home equity for retirement requires that you sell the place at some point, cashing out and moving to someplace cheaper (and potentially less desirable) to live, when you stop working. That said, there are a number of other, less risky ways you can use your home 5, 10, even 20 years in advance of your planned retirement date to:
save cash now, so you can add it to your investments increase your income now, also adding it to your retirement nest egg, and/or reduce your expenses later, which might allow you to retire sooner (at a time when retiring at all is a true feat).
Here are six sets of strategies for using your home to help you retire - without having to sell the place and retire in Timbuktu:
1. Put your spare space to work. Depending on where you live and whether you have room, you may be able to rent your home out, a little bit at a time.
