Mortgage all paid off?

Hopefully when you reach a certain age called retirement you would have settled your mortgage.

The bank is finally off your back.

But you still have the running costs to pay for; repairs, maintenance, rates, insurance, electric, gas, phone.

So what do you do?

Have you enough to pay for all of these items?

Do you know how much they all come to?

Do you have enough of a pension to afford to pay for these?

All the time you are sitting on an asset which is worth quite a considerable sum. Just check with your insurance value or as we all do, see how much that house sold for just down the street.

What could you do with that money if you were all cashed up?

No one knows when your time is up and then the kids have the job of getting rid of the things they don’t want.

You know all the priceless items you’ve horded over the years in all those rooms you don’t use now that the grandkids have grown too old to visit anymore.

Why don’t you think about what you really want to do?

There are schemes to reverse mortgages and you can borrow money on your equity but these have to be paid for and the interest on the loan mounts up and your kids could find the sale of your house barely covers the balance of the loan.

Now that you have time and little income use the time to work out how you would like to live. Check out how much it would cost to rent a decent place in a good area and how much you could make from the sale of the house.

You don’t have to actually sell your home but just do the exercise.

Why?

Because one day your kids will have to it for you.

And that is a fact.

Renting can work out cheaper as you don’t have to worry about insurance, rates, repairs and maintenance they are all inclusive. But do the numbers exercise, how much capital you would have and how much would be your outlay.