Ready For Retirement
What's the Best Way to Fund a Remodel During Retirement?
If you’re retired, you can’t wait around for the next bonus or stock to vest when you have a large expense. When you’re on a fixed income it’s more important than ever to find the best way to pull funds for large expenses.
In today’s episode, James explains how to find the best way to pay for large expenses in retirement while answering a listener’s question.
Questions Answered:
Should you use IRAs (or other assets), cash, or finance to pay for large expenses with today’s high-interest rates?
What considerations should you take into account when planning for a big expense in retirement?
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
3:48 Cashflow
8:46 Taxes
10:52 Timing
13:14 Example
20:58 Investment
27:04 Legacy
30:32 Outro
Create Your Custom Strategy ⬇️
If you’re retired, you can’t wait around for the next bonus or stock to vest when you have a large expense. When you’re on a fixed income it’s more important than ever to find the best way to pull funds for large expenses.
In today’s episode, James explains how to find the best way to pay for large expenses in retirement while answering a listener’s question.
Questions Answered:
Should you use IRAs (or other assets), cash, or finance to pay for large expenses with today’s high-interest rates?
What considerations should you take into account when planning for a big expense in retirement?
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
3:48 Cashflow
8:46 Taxes
10:52 Timing
13:14 Example
20:58 Investment
27:04 Legacy
30:32 Outro
Create Your Custom Strategy ⬇️
What do you do when you need funds for a homie model, or any large expense for that matter. But you're retired, you know how a fixed-income source is and you can't just wait around for a bonus to hit or for more stock to vest, like maybe you could in your working years. Finding the best way to pull funds for large expense is very important in retirement and that's the topic of today's episode of ready for retirement. This is another episode of ready for retirement. I'm your host, james Kanol, and I'm here to teach you how to get the most out of life with your money. And now on to the episode. Today's episode is based upon a listener question and I'm going to call this listener Sarah. Sarah submitted a question and she said this hi, james, I enjoy the thoughtfulness of your technical analysis. When your listeners pose questions. You're very thoughtful and your insight is invaluable. I hope you consider this question.
Speaker 1:I am retired, age 62, recently widowed and I'm planning an extensive remodel of my old home so that I can age in place by reducing the number of steps, widen doorways, etc. The cost of the renovation may be $800,000. I have about $700,000 in brokerage accounts. Capital gains are probably about a hundred thousand dollars after a step up, a basis in one million dollars and IRAs and a $100,000 in a Roth IRA. My current living expenses are covered by a pension and survivor social security and health care premiums Including Irma charges and Medicare supplement plans, when eligible, will be completely covered by a previous employer I know so lucky. The house, as well as whatever remains of the accounts, will be left to airs. So I was considering converting some of the IRAs to Roth over the next 10 years. What would be the best way to pay for the renovation? Should I use the brokerage accounts to pay cash or finance a portion of it in today's high interest rate environment? Thanks for your consideration and thanks for the podcast from Sarah. Well, sarah, thank you very much for that question. Thank you to all of you who submit questions. I do read all of them and I try to pick the ones that I think will be applicable to the most amount of people. Not that this specific situation per se will be the exact same as everyone else, but the principles that we can extract from it can absolutely be applied to many different situations. So I like this topic for a number of reasons, but before we jump into the episode and the outline and the content.
Speaker 1:Here let's highlight the review of the week. This review comes from Drew nine house and drew gives the podcast five stars. He says I subscribed about 15 financial podcasts. This one is amazing Simple, easy to follow, engaging and actionable. I've learned so much and it really motivated me to dig into all my financial planning, getting accounts bonus points. It keeps me distracted and entertained while exercising. Well do, thank you very much for that review. I'm glad that I get to keep you entertained and distracted while exercising. That's great. I don't know if I could listen to a financial podcast while exercising. I'm glad that you can. And thank you very much for taking the time to leave that review. Thank you to all of you who have done so and if you've not yet done so, or this is maybe your first time listening, if you're enjoying the podcast would appreciate you sharing it with others or leaving a review. That will help more people find the show when they search on Apple podcasts, google podcast, spotify or wherever else you listen to your podcasts. So with that, let's jump into the episode.
Speaker 1:So, going back to Sarah's question I mentioned, I like this question a lot because it blends many different issues. It's not just a simple black and white question, like it may seem at the outset how should I finance this renovation? Should I finance it and borrow money against my home to pay for this, or should I use my existing brokerage account, iras, other assets, to pay for it? So there's many different considerations and, as always, I cannot give a direct answer or any specific advice to Sarah or anyone else, but what I can do is I can unpack the different considerations and issues that you need to be aware of to make the best decision for you, the first of which, the first consideration, in my opinion, is simply the cash flow Consideration.
Speaker 1:Now granted, sarah is in a very unique situation, and the uniqueness of her situation is that she doesn't technically, quote-unquote, need any of her portfolio. Her needs are covered by social security and by pension. So are her health care needs. So, technically, you could look at the 1.8 million or so that she has in her portfolio and say that is all Access to an extent. Now, I don't want to say it's excess. In the standpoint of the only purpose of your portfolios to generate a monthly income stream, that's absolutely not the case.
Speaker 1:What Sarah is highlighting here is a very important thing that you should be thinking about with your portfolio how do I enhance my standard of living, how can I provide for myself my ability to do what I need to do and, in Sarah's case that's, how can I prepare a place that will allow me to age in place? However, the first thing that I do think of is what income needs do you have from your portfolio? Does your portfolio need to supplement social security or a pension to allow you to live comfortably and do what you want to do? For many people, for most people, I'd argue yes, but in Sarah's case, she's in the unique position where she doesn't need any of her portfolio, at least for basic living expenses, at least not for today. So theoretically, from a cash flow consideration or a cash flow standpoint, sarah could say I'm gonna dump all 1.8 million of my portfolio Into this home renovation and still be okay, at least on paper.
Speaker 1:Now, obviously, I wouldn't recommend that, but for most of us, what we have to ask ourselves is what will this investment do in my cash flow, this investment being the home renovation. If, even in Sarah's case but let's assume, because Sarah did need some that 1.8 million dollars, which is a million in an IRA, 100,000 in a Roth IRA and $700,000 in a brokerage account. Technically, if she was living off that portfolio, then any reduction in portfolio balance because it's being spent to finance this project. What that means is a corresponding reduction in how much income your portfolio can create. So maybe you're not Sarah, but you're asking yourself these same questions. Well, the first thing to keep in mind is if I pay all cash, if I use these assets to finance the project or to pay for the project, can you afford that reduction in income? By reducing your portfolio, you can still create the income that you need to meet all your needs. That's the first question for anyone who's looking to use part of their portfolio to pay for this.
Speaker 1:The second thing that this could do to your cash flow is let's assume that Sarah, or you or whoever's considering this, doesn't use their portfolio to pay for this, but instead they finance it. They say I'm going to borrow against the value of my home. I'm going to use the proceeds from that to finance this. Well, what does that look like? Your portfolio balance is still the same. In Sarah's case, you'd still have the $1.8 million. But now what she would need to do is understand can I now afford that mortgage payment because my expenses have gone up Because, unless this was some type of reverse mortgage, but in a conventional mortgage or even a HELOC, there's going to be some payment required. So your expenses go up as you start to pay that loan back. So those are the things that anyone should be thinking of as cash flow considerations.
Speaker 1:My first thought for Sarah and granted, I don't know Sarah, I don't know her history, I don't know where she lives, there's a number of things I don't know about her but I guess my first question would be does it make sense to do an $800,000 renovation or could it possibly make more sense to sell this home and purchase a new one? Get everything you need in terms of wider doorways, reducing or eliminating any stairs, everything else that needs to be done to age in place and still come out ahead from a price perspective. Now, there's a big emotional component to this. Sarah mentioned she's recently widowed. My guess is this is a home that she and her husband lived in. I'm sure there's a lot of memories in this property, so I don't want to negate any of that or minimize any of that. That's a huge consideration and one that, in my mind, is totally fine to justify a decision fully based upon that, assuming the finances still make sense. But what I would look at and just from the math side, the problem solving side there was a step up in basis when husband would have passed. Now I don't know if Sarah lives in a community property state or a common law state. Depending on that, that would determine how much of the home had to step up in basis. Sarah would also have the ability to exclude some capital gains if she sold a home. So not saying that it's the right option, but at least make sure it's considered, because when we look at cash flow considerations, even if Sarah doesn't necessarily need her portfolio, this is a pretty significant expense. And how can we accomplish the desired goal, which is a place to age in place, without sacrificing in terms of overspending or doing anything that could be done in a more cost effective way, without, of course, minimizing the emotional component of this as well? So just some thoughts that I would be thinking through if I was taking a look at this as well.
Speaker 1:The second consideration so, after cash, though, I'd also want to understand and I think this is a big one for a lot of people tax considerations. So I look at the situation and, right off the bat, there's so many different things you could do to reduce taxes. There's potential tax gain harvesting, there's potential Roth conversions, there's the potential of mortgage interest deductions and so much more and, like I said, because I don't know Sarah's specific situation, it's hard to tell which of these would be best. But let's just quickly go through each of these to see how might they apply. Well, number one, tax gain harvesting.
Speaker 1:So I've talked about this before, but what tax gain harvesting is is it's the concept that, depending upon what your taxable income is, you may be able to realize some long term capital gains and potentially pay nothing in taxes on that. So if you are single in your taxable income and keep in mind, taxable income is your adjusted gross income, so the top line number minus any deductions, whether it's a standard deduction or an itemized deduction so taxable income of $44,625 or less in 2023, then any gains, any long term gains that you realize up until that threshold, are taxed at 0% at the federal level. That's, if you're single, if you're married, finally jointly then any taxable income under $89,250, if it's a long term gain that's being realized is also taxed at 0% at the federal level. So why do I bring that up? Well, a pretty significant portion of Sarah's portfolio is in a brokerage account and on that brokerage account she alluded to the fact there's been a step up in basis, which would have happened when her husband passed, but there are still gains Now those gains, depending on what Sarah's income is, maybe tax different tax rates If she can sell just enough each year to stay under that threshold that I talked about.
Speaker 1:So for her $44,625 of taxable income, then any gains up until that point would be tax free at the federal level. Depending on the state that Sarah lives in, they may or may not be taxable, but that depends upon the specific state that she lives in. So another thing to consider with this, with Sarah specifically, is the timing of when she needs the funds. This probably isn't for renovation, where she's going to draw out a little bit of funds every year for the next handful of years. She might need to make some serious investment into this soon. But do you at least consider, does it make sense to sell some of these gains or realize some of these gains that I have in my brokerage account this year, maybe some next year, and maybe in doing that she saves the 15% in federal taxes she otherwise would have paid if she had sold all these funds or realized all these gains in year one. Again, I do not know Sarah's situation, I don't know what tax bracket she is in, I don't know how much she has coming in from pension or social security or what state she's in. So this is all hypothetical, just illustrating this, but it's certainly something I would consider.
Speaker 1:Hey everyone, it's me again for the Disclaimer. Please be smart about this. Before doing anything, please be sure to consult with your tax planner or financial planner. Nothing in this podcast should be construed as investment, tax, legal or other financial advice. It is for informational purposes only. The next thing I'd consider is Roth conversions, at least to illustrate what would the potential tax savings be of doing this. So let's just say, for example, that Sarah uses all of her brokerage account and maybe part of her IRAs to fund the entirety of her home renovation. Well, she now has pension and social security that are covering all of her needs. She now has the remainder of her portfolio that is extra to an extent, and it sounds like her intention is to maximize that for her heirs.
Speaker 1:So let's just make up some numbers. These are arbitrary numbers that I'm making up to try to get some sense of what tax bracket Sarah might be in. I'm going to assume that she has a pension of let's call it 3,000 per month, so 36,000 per year, and that she has social security of $15,000 per year right now, so 51,000 per year coming in. I'm just going to assume that that's the income that she's living in or living on. I should say, but again, those are my numbers, not hers. Well, if those were her numbers, then Sarah would be somewhere in the middle of the 12% tax bracket, most likely today depends on her deductions, depends upon a number of other things, but Sarah would be in the middle of the 12% tax bracket today.
Speaker 1:What we have to do anytime we're doing a Roth conversion, it's not enough just to know where we are today from a tax standpoint. We need to know where we'll likely be in the future. And where we'll be in the future is really a function of two things Number one, your taxable income sources and number two, where tax brackets will actually be, which we can't know a certainty, but we can go based upon some basic information. So let's assume, or let's fast forward, I should say, to when Sarah's age 75, that's when she's going to be required to start taking some distributions from her IRA. Well, if she doesn't touch her IRA at all because, again, she just paid for the whole home expense, she has all her needs covered her IRA might just grow and compound. Well, if it grows by 6% per year on average for the next 13 years so she's 62 today, we're comparing this to age 75, then $1 million will grow to about $2.1 million. At that time, her first year required distribution, based upon that portfolio value, might be somewhere around $80,000.
Speaker 1:Well, what's happened at that time in 13 years? A couple of things. Current tax brackets have sunset. So the existing brackets that we have today of 10%, 12%, 22%, so on and so forth, those will sunset, which means those will go up between about 3 or 4% per bracket after 2025, unless something changes. So we know, or we can at least assume, anything can happen and something will happen, most likely between now and 13 years from now. But even if we just start with the assumption that we're not going to be in today's tax brackets, we'll still be under the new brackets and really the new brackets are just the old brackets once current tax law sunsets after 2025.
Speaker 1:That being said, we can't just take that $80,000 projected RMD and tack it on to the social security and the pension that Sarah's receiving today. Why? Well, because tax brackets also have an inflation adjustment. So if you notice each year what it takes to be in the 10% bracket or 12% bracket or 22 or 24, whatever the bracket might be those numbers go up a little bit each year to adjust for inflation. So $80,000 of an RMD in the future might be more or less equivalent to about call it, $55,000 or so today. And if that's a little confusing, all I essentially did was said what's the inflation adjusted equivalent of $80,000 per year in 13 years backed down till today? So a present value of that it's about $55,000.
Speaker 1:Essentially, asking, if tax brackets go up by about inflation, then we can't just tack on $80,000 of an RMD on top of social security and pension today. We need to tack it on. But what the inflation adjusted equivalent of that might be? So maybe about $55,000. So if that doesn't make sense, it's kind of besides the point. But what it tells us is that Sarah might be at the top of about the 25% bracket by the time that she is 75. And why I say that is because she would still have social security, she would still have her pension, she would also have her required minimum distribution and if those three income sources were all she had, she would be at the top of about the 25% tax bracket.
Speaker 1:25% tax bracket doesn't exist today. It's a 22% bracket. But remember, we're assuming that that has sunset after 2025. So why does it important to know that? Well, it's important to know that because today, based upon the numbers, we're assuming Sarah might be in the 12% bracket so she can move money from her IRA to her Roth IRA the 12% bracket. She's probably going to be better off and simply waiting until she's forced to distribute those funds, but doing so at a higher tax bracket, in this case, more than double what she's currently at at the federal level, which would push her into an higher tax bracket than she really needs to be in. So this is just the way you want to look at Roth conversions, and that doesn't mean Sarah should take her whole million dollars and push it into a Roth IRA, because we have to keep in mind that every dollar we move into our IRA has the potential to push us into higher brackets. So you want to find that fine line of converting enough today for it to be financially beneficial to you, but not convert so much that you end up paying more in taxes at today's rates than you would had you simply better managed your Roth conversion process. So that's something that I would look to.
Speaker 1:And the other tax part that I would look at is potentially refinancing the home. Now, in a lot of cases I would steer away from this, even for non-financial reasons, but it does at least make sense to consider it. So let's assume I know Sarah said that the cost for innovations is $800,000. Let's assume it was only $750,000. I say $750,000 because that's the limit on mortgages of how much you can write off the interest against. So if you have $500,000 mortgage balance, you can write off 100% of the interest on your tax return. If you have a million dollars in mortgage interest, well, you can still only write off $750,000 of the mortgage interest. So let's just use that number as a nice round number.
Speaker 1:And let's assume that Sarah could get a mortgage at 7%. Well, another quick side note on a mortgage if Sarah was just to take out that mortgage and she used it to invest in a business or spend or do something else with, she can't actually write off that mortgage interest. Part of the new mortgage laws a few years back was that you can only write off mortgage interest if you are using the proceeds to renovate your home or it's going to be used to improve your home. In Sarah's case, that would be the issue, or that would be the case, so she could fully write this off. Now here's what this would look like and here's how it plays in from a tax planning standpoint. If she were to get a 7% mortgage interest rate on a $750,000 mortgage, her monthly principal and interest payment would be $4,990 per month On an annual basis. That comes out to $59,880 per year. Now there's some cash flow considerations with that. That we briefly touched upon earlier.
Speaker 1:I want to focus on the tax considerations. With this Her first year payment towards that mortgage, the first 12 months, she's paying $59,880 in that year. However, of that, a full $52,258 is totally there's fully interest, so very little is actually going to the principal and that's important because that's all fully deductible. So if we're looking at combining Roth conversions with this, now what you essentially have is, when you do a Roth conversion, you're creating income. Well, if we can simultaneously create some deductions, that's helping to offset the income. Now there is still the cost of the interest and you're never reducing, dollar for dollar what you're paying an interest by what you're reducing in taxes. So I never want people to say I should just get a mortgage because of the write offs. No, let's say you pay a dollar a mortgage interest and you're 30% tax bracket. It saves you 30 cents in taxes. So you're still out 70 cents. But what it does is it dampens a little bit the actual cost of the mortgage, the actual cost of that interest. So, theoretically, in Sarah's situation, the first year's interest payment is $52,258, then she could create, via Roth conversions or some other income source, another $52,258 of income without it making her taxable income any higher. So it's pretty significant to combine these types of deductions with other things that create the income.
Speaker 1:Now, it's still probably recommend against this in many different cases for many different reasons. But peace of mind, simplicity, simple cash flow those are all reasons not to get a mortgage involved with this. Yes, maybe there's some potential tax benefits, but if it's going to cause less peace of mind, if it's going to cause stress, if it's going to make cash flow more difficult to manage, then in many cases, in my opinion at least those are reasons the offset any benefits created by the mortgage interest tax deduction. So those are some tax considerations. The next thing I would look at is the investment consideration. Now, this is where you have to look at the spreadsheet answer, the paper answer, versus what actually works in reality. But on paper, on the spreadsheet, what you do is you look at the interest rate of the mortgage versus the growth you could potentially get on your invested funds and you compare the two and If the mortgage interest rate is higher than in many cases, you say you know what maybe just makes more sense to pay cash for this renovation or use funds to pay for the renovation Versus.
Speaker 1:If you had what we had maybe three years ago or so, two years ago or so, and you could get an interest rate of 3%, will you look at that and you say, okay, if I'm gonna have a mortgage that's at 3% interest and I'm gonna hold that for 15 years or 30 years, I've got a pretty high likelihood of performing better than that over the duration of the mortgage. And if that's the case, you may be more inclined to keep funds invested and Finance a project like this, as opposed to having to sell funds and you have the opportunity cost what they could have grown by instead of using them to pay for the project. Well, the thing now is interest rates are closer to 7%. So what you have to do is you have to say, okay, we have a new threshold or we have a new hurdle that we'd have to be able to cross or exceed if we think it makes more sense to Invest or keep funds invested by getting a mortgage. But to look at it more precisely, you kind of have to look at the after tax equivalent of that interest rate. Because you can deduct the interest that you're paying on the mortgage.
Speaker 1:The actual impact here cash flow or the actual effective rate is Less because there's some tax savings associated with it. For example, if you earn a 20% tax bracket and you pay $30,000 in a year in mortgage interest, so when you're deducting all of it on your tax return, then that saves you $6,000 in taxes. So you paid $30,000 in interest. It saves you $6,000 in taxes. The actual cost was $24,000 of interest in that example. So the higher your tax bracket, the lower your effective interest rate, because that offset or that deduction is saving you more and more dollars because you're in a higher tax bracket.
Speaker 1:So in Sarah's case let's assume she's in a 20% tax bracket 7% interest rate effectively becomes a 5.6% interest rate, because 5.6% is 80% or 20% less than that7. This isn't fully accurate because of the timing of cash flows and because the way that mortgages are amortized. For example, in the first year Sarah would end up paying, on her standard mortgage payment, $52,258 in interest, versus in your 30 of a 30-year mortgage, same exact payment but only paying $2,210 in interest. So even though it's the same payment, the same interest rate, in the first year she's saving far more in taxes with the interest rate deduction than she is in the final year. And that's just how amortization works. However, just for simplicity, let's just assume that in Sarah's case you could get a 7% mortgage rate and we're gonna say, effectively that's a 5.6% interest rate after the tax deductions that would provide. So we have to do that as a hurdle.
Speaker 1:Do we think that Sarah's investments could return more than 5.6%? If so, you might be a bit more inclined to keep your money invested in finance this project versus Understanding simply paying for this project out of hand or out of portfolio or with cash on hand. That's like getting a return of 5.6%. When you realize the mortgage interest, you wouldn't have to be paying over the course of the lifetime of a loan. In many cases, especially when you're retired and especially when you're living on this money, you're gonna err on the side of being a bit more conservative, especially because interest rates have risen so much in the last couple of years.
Speaker 1:That being said, let's assume Sarah does go ahead and move forward with selling her full brokerage account and using that to pay for the cost of the renovation. What I will say is this with her remaining assets so the IRA and the Roth IRA and she's probably maybe using bits of the IRA or Roth IRA to Compliment what she sells some brokerage account in order to make this renovation but with those remaining assets, she now has what I would call more risk capacity To take in those accounts. Here's what I mean by that. Let's assume the market's down 50% Is she could handle it, financially speaking at least. And she could handle it because she still has her pension, she still has her social security. She essentially paid cash for the renovation. So the market's down 50%. Her 1.1 million remaining in her portfolio is maybe now worth 550,000, but she doesn't have to sell it. She doesn't have to liquidate it because she's not dependent upon that money to live on. Now. It's not fun, but emotionally she could do that.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this, or if Sarah was in a different position, where she did depend on her portfolio to supplement her pension or social security, she would not have as much risk capacity. She couldn't afford a 50% drawdown, knowing that on top of that drawdown she's also having to draw funds from her portfolio. So when you look at this from that standpoint, we have to understand it's not just looking at this from okay, should we take the guaranteed payoff of the mortgage and effectively get a 5.6 return in Sarah's case for that, versus should we borrow money and invest, or rather remain invested or keep the brokerage account invested, hoping to exceed that 5.6%? That's not the only aspect of investment considerations that we want to look at. Even assuming you sell the brokerage account to fund the renovation, what does that do for our risk capacity and our risk tolerance with the remaining assets? So that's certainly something that should be looked at as well, especially if Sarah's viewing the IRA and Roth IRA as legacy money, so money she's trying to maximize not just from an investment standpoint but also from a tax standpoint, to ultimately pass on to heirs. If that's the case, then we absolutely need to know Sarah's risk tolerance and her comfort level with investing. But we also need to know how would we align these assets if we know they're not being used today for Sarah's purposes. Rather, she wants to maximize those for 2030 plus years, to ultimately pass down to future generations in her heirs.
Speaker 1:And this then ties into the fourth consideration, which is really legacy considerations. We just covered how asset allocation or investment decisions should be framed from a legacy standpoint, but there's also things like tax considerations. Instead of just looking at Sarah's tax bracket today and her tax bracket once RMDs kick in to determine things like Roth conversions, sarah should also be at least considering her heirs tax bracket, or at least her projected tax bracket, at the time when they might be inheriting some of these funds. Now, that's a difficult thing to do. What you're trying to do is you're trying to project out how long will Sarah live? Is it 20, 25, 30 years? You're trying to project out where will her children be in terms of their income and tax brackets at that time. You're trying to project out where will tax brackets even be 20, 30 years in the future. So, granted, this is a difficult thing to do with precision, maybe it's an impossible thing to do with precision, but it's at least a consideration that we should be making Understand. Generally speaking, what tax bracket might they be in, based upon career paths or income potential, or where they might be versus what we know about Sarah and her current tax bracket?
Speaker 1:Another aspect of the legacy piece is this is does investing $800,000 into the current home increase the value of the home by $800,000 or more? If not, are you better off selling the home and purchasing an entirely different home that already meets your needs and is more likely to be a larger assets for heirs? Now, really big disclaimer. I almost hesitate to even say that that should not be the first priority. Your first priority should not be are these renovations going to provide more assets for my heirs 20, 30 years in the future? Your quality of life should absolutely be your top priority. I see this and this is my opinion, and you're entitled to your own.
Speaker 1:But too many people sacrificing their own quality of life and retirement or their own peace of mind and retirement, trying to do everything they can to maximize portfolio or home or things that will ultimately enhance their heirs long after they're gone. Now, my personal philosophy is that's not the right way to approach it, but to each their own. It is your money. It is yours to do what you want with it. I just don't think that's a wisest thing to do. Instead, I think there is a good balance.
Speaker 1:But the reason I say this and going back to the home that Sarah's looking to renovate, what you sometimes see is people doing highly customized things to their home that really fit their needs, which is wonderful, and again, it adds to more quality of life, which absolutely should be the goal. But when it comes time to sell that home, those features really don't mean anything, or at least don't mean as much to new buyers. So it's very possible that an $800,000 investment in the home might not increase the home value by that much, depending on when and who ultimately buys the home, which might not be for 20, 30 years. And again, that should not be the first consideration. The first consideration is if this is a home that you love, sarah, if this is a home that you have memories in maybe this is a home where you raise your family or wonderful things happened you might look at this and say you know what.
Speaker 1:Getting $800,000 in the home does nothing really for the home value, but what it does do is it allows me to continue living in the place that I love, maybe around the people that I love. That alone is enough, knowing that you've got good financial situation around you, you have stable income, you still have liquid portfolio assets. Don't do everything just from the what's going to return the investment or get the greatest return on investment. Look at things through what's going to enhance quality of life and then return an investment, and tax savings and other considerations should be used to supplement that, but those should not be the first considerations. So, as we're looking again at Sarah's situation, her specifics are probably not almost certainly not your specifics, whether it's regards to her cashless situation versus your cashless situation, or her tax situation versus your tax situation, or investments or legacy or whatever the case might be. But I hope that as we start to unpack this, you can start to see how different considerations are going to have different responses by different people because of their unique circumstances. So I hope this was helpful to see Sarah.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much for submitting that question. Thank you to all of you who are listening. Always appreciate you taking the time to do so. If you haven't already left a review for the show, please go ahead and do so, but that is it for today's episode and I look forward to seeing you all next time. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Ready for Retirement podcast. If you want to see how Root Financial can help you implement the techniques I discussed in this podcast, then go to rootfinancialpartnerscom and click start here, where you can schedule a call to one of our advisors. We work with clients all over the country and we love the opportunity to speak with you about your goals and how we might be able to help. And please remember nothing we discuss in this podcast is intended to serve as advice. You should always consult a financial, legal or tax professional who's familiar with your unique circumstances before making any financial decisions.