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Everyone who “retires” (whatever that means) without any further earned income is, by definition, retiring with debt. Everyone. Why? Because tomorrow you’re going to have to eat. Unless you live self-sufficiently in a cabin and can live off the land and off the grid by growing or catching your own food, collecting your water, possibly generating your own power, and not needing to ever buy a single other thing, you automatically have debt.
Sure, this is a slightly semantic argument. On the other hand, responsible financial preparation for retirement means understanding how much money you’ve saved and how long it is likely to last given the amount you spend each year (aka your burn rate). Financial debt is just another line item expense that goes into your burn rate, along with groceries, utilities and car insurance.
Whether it’s paying off a mortgage at a low interest rate, or paying down credit card balances at a usurious interest rate, having debt is fine as far as it goes if you’ve factored that into your monthly burn rate and your overall retirement plan.
Now whether this is the best use of money as part of an overall investment portfolio, that’s an entirely separate question. And probably the real question being asked here.
I liked to have a 30 year fixed mortgage at 3.25% as an inflation hedge when I started retirement. When I refinanced our 5.25% mortgage into the lower rate our home had a rental value of $2500 per month. Our monthly payment was only $1100 so we were getting all that rental value for more than twice our payment. Right now I can buy CDs for over 5%. Why would I cash out 5% to pay off 3.25% debt? This is one of those rare times I disagree with Richard Quinn.
It depends. If you do not have a lot of income, it doesn’t make sense to pay off your mortgage and tie up all that cash. It is a personal decision. If you can afford to pay off all debt, mainly a mortgage, and it gives you piece of mind, then do it. But maybe you don’t want to have that money sitting there doing nothing for you, even if you can afford to pay it off. I put $775k into a house before retiring only because I did not want to pay for flood insurance, which a mortgage required. I could have gotten a very low interest rate and used that money for many other things,
The Humble Dollar crowd is obviously smart about money, with valid points raised to support the pro and anti-debt view. I think this is one of those topics that comes down to risk temperament. For me, I couldn’t imagine carrying debt in retirement — but the pro-debt crowd would surely cringe at the opportunity cost that they’d see in my cash holdings.
You ask a yes/no question Looks like most people are a “yes” and it’s great to see their why. I say no and here’s my why. The short of it is – lower debt is like having more insurance.
It feels like most of the comments are about how personal debt fits into people’s investing strategies. Debt will let them earn more in investing.
For me, I think it’s best to separate essential needs, like secure housing, from investing strategies. I take a very conservative position with feeling safe and secure. I take a very aggressive position with investing. I can’t put those two things together!
In reality most people use debt to live beyond our means. We may say, “It was too good an interest rate to pass up.” If, as in most cases, we don’t actually invest the cash, it’s just talk. But if we do take the loan so that we can invest our cash, we have $X invested at risk of loss and we have $X in debt that must be repaid no matter what life or world circumstances arise. If things go bad, you could lose twice with this strategy!
Low or no personal debt to me is in the same category as having insurance. You don’t make insurance decisions based on its investment value. Could you imagine saying, “If I don’t spend $Y on insurance, I could invest that money and it would be worth $Z in 20 years – how clever of me!” No. You carry insurance because it protects you from financial ruin in the case of a major peril.
For major debt – You can’t guarantee that just because you can manage the debt now that you could in the face of some major personal or world circumstance. Plan B, you could sell the asset to rid yourself of the debt payment. Ok, but you can’t guarantee anybody would buy it. Or buy it quick enough to solve your emergency. Plus, it’s not unusual at all to be upside down on a loan.
To me clever is: buy half the house you can afford. Pay it off quick. Invest the other half. This separates personal security from investing strategies and keeps you from having a bunch of money locked up in equity that could be working for you.
My suggestion is that most people retire all their debt before their retirement date if possible… it makes managing one’s resources easier. That’s good not only for the relatively innumerate, but also for all of us as we age and our mental processes become less flexible. There will be plenty of exceptions, though, for many good reasons.
I expect to maintain my mortgage into retirement unless we see a windfall before then. The arbitrage is working well, and my mortgage rate is low enough that my stable value fund returns are outpacing my mortgage interest. The mortgage is also an inflation hedge of sorts. Lastly, avoiding prepaying the mortgage is enabling us to supplement our pre-tax savings with post-tax savings, which we want available as a bridge from retirement to age 59.5 (when we can withdraw from tax deferred accounts) and may give us some tax flexibility.
Depends. If you have enough guaranteed income to cover it – no problem. If you are living off of uncertain stock market returns, it is better to not be forced to come up with additional income to make the debt payment every month.
Having debt or not having debt in retirement — seems like saying “no debt” would be the obvious answer, but the actual decision needs to be made in context of your situation.
I’ll retire this year probably at age 69, start taking social security at age 70, wife will still work and bring in a hefty income for another 2.5 years, and I have a net worth of over $3 million. Debt is part of what got me here.
I have a mortgage on my home of $385K at 3.25% and the house is worth over a million. If the debt became a burden I would downsize the house (which is twice as big as we need now), pull out the $700K of equity and buy a smaller house with cash. Context!
I have 2 other mortgages totaling $600K on vacation rental properties, at 3%, with the rentals being worth $1.1 million, and the rentals will generate a net profit of $35k this year, and can be reliably expected to generate no less than $20K even in bad years. If the debt became a burden I sell the rentals, eliminating the debt, and walk away with $500K. I’ll sell them anyways at some point after I retire. Context.
I have a $2K loan left on a car at 2.5%, an $11K loan left on a home improvement at 0%, and I pay off all my credit cards in full every month. These loans will go away soon, but the cost of the debt is far less than what my investments will earn. I’d rather not have the debt, but in Context, it really doesn’t matter much.
My calculations are that with an income of $125K/yr, I can easily handled the debt for as long as it lasts. And between social security and investment income from retirement accounts, I can easily bring in that annual income. And again, if the economy really tanks, I have assets that can be sold without seriously compromising my lifestyle.
My financial strategy has always been to build my net worth, NOT to build my annual income. Sometimes I leverage debt, to build my net worth.
I started with nothing. Now I have a lot.
I’m not bragging – well maybe a little bit. But my point is to have a strategy, and if the strategy means you have debt, just make sure the strategy generates income to cover debt payments, and gives you have options to eliminate the debt if things go wrong. And a good insurance policy helps too.
The automatic “anti-debt no matter what” point of view is not helpful, unless you have no strategy.
No, if one can help it. Someone will have to pay it, and it could be your own family.
I view debt as part of my investment portfolio. If I hold debt, then I probably also need to hold more safe investment reserves in case the market crashes or some other unexpected event interrupts my cash flow.
Since one’s borrowing rate is typically > their savings rate, it generally seems advisable to pay down debt assuming sufficient liquidity in determining your portfolio allocation.
Another way of thinking of this is to include any debt that you have as negative fixed income investments in evaluating your portfolio allocation. Then the decision to pay down debt or invest in fixed income securities becomes a simple yield comparison.
I think this is a wise approach for those who fully understand the trade-offs and cash flow implications.
Once you get beyond the very basics of cash flow, however, people frequently make mistakes – so I wouldn’t recommend this for most investors/retirees.
Debt any time for any reason drives me nuts. I can’t even stand credit card balances when I know they will be paid in full by month end. Retirement makes it worse. Any logical argument notwithstanding, I say avoid debt.
I read a funny once – even in a zombie apocalypse, your creditors will expect a payment every month!
Ideally, our guaranteed retirement income will cover our monthly fixed costs, or come close to doing so.
If debt service increases our fixed costs such that larger than expected portfolio withdrawals are necessary to raise cash, we may be courting trouble.
Debt in retirement is probably okay if its manageable. Otherwise, it may be best to avoid it.
Sure, but it’s more dependent on the person and their feelings/stress about debt. Holding fixed-rate debt can actually be a hedge against inflation–if inflation soars, your fixed-rate debt dwindles in real value. So taking out a 15yr fixed-rate mortgage at 2.3% today with inflation expected to be 2.6% over the next 5 years is absolutely no problem (on a spreadsheet).
But if you are one of those folks just freaked out about debt, chances are your feelings are not going to change at this point if you are a retiree.
Remember to distinguish debt in retirement from debt at old age. When the median age at retirement was 60 or 61, carrying debt into old age and retirement was essentially the same thing and mostly unthinkable. Today:
Should we really be as concerned about debt at “older ages” or in our “redefined” retirement as we might have been decades ago when retirement often occurred at earlier ages, net worth was less, poverty was less, etc.?
I have a mortgage but I’ve garnered 72% equity not taking into account today’s hot hot market value. I have to have a roof over my head regardless. Do I pay off a 2.3% mortgage where 50% of the $900 payment is insurance and tax? I’m not convinced, yet.
A 2.3% mortgage is cheap money. But that’s still more than you’ll earn on a savings account, CDs or Treasury bonds these days. Thus, if you hold such investments in a taxable account, it could be worth selling to pay off your mortgage.
I’m not a big fan of debt in retirement, but I think there is an interesting angle for those wanting a hedge of inflation to maintain a low cost mortgage. If the currency is debased we would pay that mortgage off with cheaper dollars. Other than as an inflation hedge, I’d rather lower my monthly expenses by not having any debt payments.
This is another interesting question that garners voices on both sides. The obvious answer is yes, if you have the income or resources to pay the debt. Some FPs, like Rick Edelman, worry that by paying off a mortgage you leave your self with no liquid assets. If a problem occurs that requires ready cash, you could be in trouble. For me it is a balance with what you are comfortable carrying, vs. your resources. But it does feel nice to say you have no debt.
We will go into retirement with our mortgage debt, but we’re not worried about it. Why? Well, it’s not that big of a payment, especially not after refinancing to a really low rate last year. We have guaranteed retirement income, with very good pensions and Social Security. We have ample 401K/IRA savings to cover anything else and are mainly seeing that as fun money or “help the kids” money.
For many years, we had a big chunk of our net worth tied up in our house, which we’d bought in the 90s and had appreciated a great deal. We sold it, put some of the money down on our new condo, and now have a nice cash cushion. This felt really good to have when COVID hit. I’m not really interested in having buckets of money tied up in a house again.