#452 - Should We Consider a Mortgage for Building Our Retirement House?

We’re back again answering your retirement questions! On the docket for today are questions like whether should you consider taking on a mortgage in retirement, whether it’s feasible to hold only ESG investments in retirement, and if you need life insurance in retirement.

In addition to answering these listener questions, I’ll also share several book suggestions that I got in response to the 6-Shot Saturday newsletter and reflect on insights I learned from my time in Colorado.

Don’t miss out on upping your retirement game. Press play to hear answers to questions from listeners like you!

“I created an Inflation in Retirement Guide to help you understand and navigate inflation as you approach retirement.”

Dealing with inflation in retirement

Have you been worried about how you will deal with inflation in retirement? If so, you are not alone. That is why my team and I created an Inflation in Retirement Guide to help you understand and navigate inflation as you approach retirement. In this FREE guide, you’ll learn 6 tactics to consider and practical ways to help you think through the issues that rising inflation brings to retirement.

“Set yourself up to experience the things you enjoy.”

6 insights from my time in Salida, Colorado

My goal with the Retirement Answer Man show is to help you navigate not just the financial side of retirement, but also the life side. You need to have both sides in order to really rock retirement.

If you have listened to the show in the past you may know that my wife and I go to Salida, Colorado, and rent a house for about a month each summer. We love it up there which is why we purchased a lot there last year with the intention of building a home and eventually splitting our time or relocating in the future.

We just returned from our most recent trip, so I thought I would share a few insights that I gained from my time there.

Set yourself up to experience the things you enjoy. I realized that one of the reasons that I love Salida is that it sets us up to easily do the things we love to do. We love hiking and mountain biking and these activities are easily accessible as opposed to our home in Fort Worth where partaking in these activities requires more planning. In retirement, consider moving closer to the things you love to do.
It’s easier to make friends in Salida. This smaller town has a slower pace and lacks the hustle and bustle of Fort Worth. People are more open to having conversations, so it is easier to make connections.
Just do it! Just do the things you enjoy doing. Acting is better than (over)thinking. It is easy to think about doing things rather than acting upon them, but the only thing that will move you forward is actually doing the thing you want to do.
It is harder to make decisions when your heart is involved. It is difficult to gain perspective on your own life. Oftentimes, your head goes along with what your heart wants. Listen in to hear how a recent decision backfired on me when I pulled the trigger and acted with my heart.
Home is an important base to have. As much as we enjoy our yearly trips to Salida, a month in a rental never feels like home.
Spend big on the important things and be ruthless about everything else. It is important to strike a balance in life, so make sure that your spending is aligned with what you care about.

Should we take a mortgage to build our retirement dream house?

This listener is careful with money and has been mortgage and debt free for over a decade. They are looking to build their dream home their “castle in the sky” and are considering whether they should take a mortgage out to build this home. The mortgage would only take 20% of their retirement pension. Is it worth it or should they pay cash for the home? What do you think? Listen in to hear my answer.

“Spend big on the important things and be ruthless about everything else.”

OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE RETIREMENT ANSWER MAN

PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT

[3:30] Insights from my time in Colorado
[12:38] Listener book suggestions

LISTENER QUESTIONS

[14:45] Mortgage in retirement
[22:00] How challenging is it to control where your retirement investments come from?
[32:03] On the necessity of life insurance in retirement
[38:41] On credit in retirement
[42:12] If relying on a dividend approach they need to be diverse