Personal Finance (Not Investing) • Question on how my parents can make their money last

[Topic is now in Personal Finance (Not Investing). Thank you to the member who reported it and explained this section was a better fit. - mod mkc]

Hi, I've posted several times in the past about my parents' financial issues and gotten great advice. I think the major change that has happened recently is that all of us siblings have decided to cut all ties with them (financial and otherwise). I made that decision a bit before they did, but we all agreed at this point for our own sanity/mental health there is no choice.

We want to just give them one last piece of advice (whether they take it or not) and just leave them to their own devices.

They are in their late 60s, collect about $2800 in Social Security combined. Residence is in Southern California and valued at a conservative $850k, with about a $150k mortgage balance. Only other financial asset is a bank account with about $10k.

Their ongoing mortgage + property tax alone comes out to about $1600/month. My siblings have moved away from direct cash assistance, but have been paying for ongoing expenses like utilities, car insurance, the occasional random bill, even groceries, etc, but will be stopping all of it.

I guess broadly we want to advise our parents on how they can live out the rest of their lives without running out of money, and in 2 broad scenarios:

(1) Staying in their residence, or at least in their area : Reverse mortgage? Sell and buy a smaller/cheaper residence? Sell and rent? Gov't assistance unique to California they should look into?

(2) Selling and moving out of their area to cheaper COL : Would this be the superior option? Buy a cheaper place? Rent? How much $$$ to spend?

TYIA

Statistics: Posted by Dregob — Sat May 18, 2024 10:40 pm — Replies 25 — Views 3726