DH wanted to work to 67-68. But a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer at 63 resulted in his death in just over 10 months. He fought his best and even had chemo one week before he died.
We signed new wills and trust etc to update two weeks before he died. I knew enough about our investments and legal matters that we really didn’t have conversations about what to do after his death — we didn’t need to have those conversations and I didn’t want to put him through them.
I don’t know how long I want to work. I don’t “need” to as we have/had enough for a retirement for two. But I haven’t settled into my new income level, without his, and the survivor’s pension hasn’t begun for me. I can’t really live on my work income, but I want to see how I do with the pension added. Later, date undecided, after I retire, at some point I’ll take his (higher) social security.
I am “splurging” on a few things that are really delayed gratification following covid and his illness: new carpet on the second floor (that had been planned before his illness, but it would have been too disruptive), a new car for me (following selling his car and $3K maintenance bills needed for my own), and some urgently needed travel to see friends, family, and a new first grandchild.
So, make sure your plans include a few “what-ifs” — what if you don’t make it to retirement? What will you each do and what are your views and expectations for the next 10-20-30 years?
As much as I’m irritated with TurboTax (their constant upselling, sneaky ways to get you to agree to more advertising, etc), wouldn’t they walk you through that when you do your Federal? Not that you’d want to switch programs, but I thought they just transfer it to state if it applies. Then again, maybe not for states that don’t have state income tax except on specific ithings? Confusing!
Does an enclosed porch count as square footage? It didn’t when we bought our house. That said, the porch was a big selling point for us. We will do only the renovations that will help sell the house when the time comes (main bathroom, kitchen). I’d like to do those sooner rather than later because if we are spending $ on these things, I’d like to enjoy them!
Be sure to track your capital improvements on your house to increase your basis! If you bought at $200k, made $100k in improvements, you can sell at $800k before incurring taxes on the house sale (assuming you can use the $500k tax-free home sale exclusion). I have a spreadsheet and a file with documents to keep track. We’ve been in the house 26 years, and the house has tripled in value. Don’t think we’ll go over the $500k exclusion, but it’s easier to collect the info contemporaneously rather than having to piece it together when we (or heirs) sell. The IRS has guidance on what improvements qualify.
Is anyone thinking about downsizing to one car in the early retirement years ? A friend just did it and it seems to work well for her and her H, which got me to thinking.
During DH’s 17 years of 100% travel, we had only one car. We went down to one car again when we retired, but then DH bought a sporty two-seater convertible out of his hookers-and-beer money to tool around in in AZ, so we have two cars here, but I never use the toy car, and DH will probably sell it when he gets tired of getting in and out of it. We have one car at the cabin in Maine.
We could get along with one car. Typically only one of our vehicles is out of the garage (often with us both together). My 2006 minivan, which flipped past 100k last year, has not cost much to maintain. If it becomes unreliable or expensive to maintain, I’d consider a trial period with one car. Availability of Uber certainly makes it easier to consider.
Our dilemma is that we love the mpgs on our Prius, but we still go camping, and it’s not a great car for loading our gear. The Subaru is good for that, but the mileage is bleah. OTOH, a higher seat would be good for my knees and back. Both the Subaru (2011) and Prius (2017) have 120k miles.
S2 was supposed to get the Subaru when he returned from a year in Ukraine, with the thought that he could afford to get his own place if he didn’t have a car payment. Six years later, he’s still overseas and we still have the Subaru.
I’ve been taking solo trips the past couple years to see friends and family, so H would be without a car if I’m gone for ten days. But oooh, it’s nice to think about potentially only buying one more car over the rest of our driving lives.
We both work at home, which means both cars are often sitting at home. But, we are often out for part of the day and not always at the same time. The cars have different uses. ShawWife needs something that can take supplies she uses for painting and her paintings – some mounted on board. Plus heavy bags of stuff. My car is for driving and we take it to Florida – plus nice to have a classy car if we pick people up for dinner. So hard to doit with only one at the moment. But, I’m hoping that these cars will last until autonomous uber/lyft cars and autonomous cars exist in general. So we might own one and use uber for the rest.
Agree. I use TT. It’s been fine for our purposes. No state income tax is why they do not have a WA add-on. I have to get some sort of an account with the state treasury, then enter sale proceeds and cost basis manually. The state takes 7% over a certain amount. ZOMG, thank goodness it was just a couple of stocks that happened to be acquired for cash… can’t imagine manually entering dozens! Been there, done that in 2000, do not want to repeat that.
Oh wow, I thought they would have an add on with that cap gains tax. They always seem to have something else to charge you another $129 for! Hopefully that tax will be repealed in November, but not soon enough for you, sadly. Though I’m not 100% sure that’s one of the ones trying to be repealed. Tax, tax, tax.
We have friends who do quite well career-wise/financially. They adopted 2 kids - one was in her mid 40s, on mid-30s when they adopted their first child. This older retired when she was in her early 50s and chose to take SS when she could.
Lo and behold, when she received her first SS check, there is an extra $2,000. $1,000 for each minor kid. They had no idea! They got it for 3 years until older child turned 18 and for 5 years until the younger one turned 18 (which was just last year).
It seems odd that a well to do family who chose to have kids later in life and who chose to retire early, received over $90k in total in SS for their kids. (Note: I don’t know 100% that they received $1k per month per child for that entire time but think they did.) Doesn’t seem very sustainable for the SSA.
We have talked about going to one car now that we live in the city and so much is walkable where we live. The problem is we live in a very snowy (except this past winter ) area so we really need an SUV (H’s vehicle). That’s also the car we take on road trips to visit family, etc. My car is a small hybrid which is easy to park and gets great mileage. So which would we keep?
We have a similar car issue. We don’t need two cars. We have an over 10 year old SUV and a 3 year old Corolla. The problem is that we wouldn’t want to just have the Corolla, because we can’t lug anything big in it. It doesn’t make sense to only have the older car, because it is likely to need repairs soon. We figure once the old SUV dies, we can trade in both cars for a newer small SUV and live with just that one car.
When using the desktop version of TT, the only add-ons I have encountered are a $45 charge for additional states beyond the one free state download that came with the initial purchase, and maybe a $25 fee to E-file the state return. (I haven’t filed yet so I cannot recall the E-file fee.) I print the six pages of the state return and mail it.
A friend was helping her father with his taxes using the online version and yes, the fees kept adding up. I was appalled as his taxes were simple. Kind of scammy of TT to have such vastly different fees when using downloaded vs online.
That’s what we did. Last year, our mail in state return was processed faster than our efile federal return.
We went from 3 cars to 2. We had a great 2011 Subaru Outback with about 120,000 miles on it. We used it when we had a lot of stuff to take somewhere. We decided we just didn’t need it…so sold it to a friend.
Any parent collecting social security who has a minor child can collect on behalf of that child. My daughter got 60 percent of my benefit when I started collecting at full retirement age (65.5 I recall). It was only six months and we had to set up a separate bank account for her benefit, about which it was made clear to me that it had to be used for her benefit. We used the money for our share of her first-semester expense for college. It stopped at the end of the month she graduated from high school. (I adopted my daughter when I was almost 50 and she was almost 2.)
) area so we really need an SUV (H’s vehicle). That’s also the car we take on road trips to visit family, etc. My car is a small hybrid which is easy to park and gets great mileage. So which would we keep?