Personal Investments • Career ending, getting fired. Can we FIRE ?

Given everything else going on in your health, career etc I think that in the short term, you are probably best staying in your house. Anything else is stress.

Yes.

It's not obvious to me that there is a decently cheaper local solution.
Given health care & support network etc then it has to be local. You will need those more not less in the time to come.

The only one I can see at the moment is renting a smaller home. Sales proceeds from the home would nearly double the portfolio size, and more than cover rent. I'm just not enthusiastic about retiring as a renter with the amount of personal property we have. I truly hate moving.

I would much rather buy a smaller home than rent a smaller home. Unfortunately, I did the math and it just does not reduce costs significantly. This is mainly because my home is undervalued compared to every other home in the neighborhood, by every single home value estimator out there. It is estimated at $400/sq ft, when other homes on the same street are at $700/sq ft. My immediate neighbor's 30% smaller home is valued at just 3% less, for example. 3% less than a real estate agent commission. They are effectively valued the same. It makes no sense to me. To buy a home half the price locally, it would need to be 1/4 of the size of the current home. That's just too much of a downgrade. There are no other $400/sq ft homes for sale within 75 miles, which is not local. I think these value estimators sites are basing the value off the very low price I originally paid, as it was a foreclosure. The current home value really should be over $3M based on size alone, never mind all the upgrades I did. But it is just $2M. I will try contacting some of these sites to inquire, but I may not be so lucky as to get them all to re-estimate it for as much as $1M more.

I am guessing you will be making plans to get your estate in order as well* - so your partner doesn't have to deal with that if you become mentally incapacitated or otherwise it becomes an issue?

Yes, this is on my to-do list.

Statistics: Posted by madbrain — Thu Mar 21, 2024 8:58 pm — Replies 159 — Views 24763

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