Home Ownersship During Retirement Years

The question of downsizing into a smaller home pops up when many people retire. After you quit working at your old job, it may make sense to adjust to smaller living quarters. This is not an easy question for many retired people to settle, but it is important to consider it!

Did you buy a large house when you had a large and growing family? If so, this home may be very sentimental to you. It also provides plenty of extra rooms so you have space to house your kids and grand-kids when they visit. You may have a lot of good reasons to keep your house.

However, you should only let sentimental reasons take you so far. If you are keeping a home with lots of extra bedrooms because your kids visit twice a year, you may be wasting a lot of money. When you own a home, you must pay for a home policy, write out a check for property taxes, and spend money for upkeep.

You may find that some expenses will be cheaper, anyway, than they were when your whole family lived in your house. You can probably close off some rooms to save money on utilities, try to compare online insurance quotes to get the best homeowners insurance rates, and get a lower property tax rate because you are over 65. There will still be plenty of bills you still have to pay regardless of how many people live in the house.

On the other hand, if you could move into a smaller house, or even rent an apartment, you may get a lot of benefits. Reducing living space can reduce a lot of bills and worries!

With a smaller, cheaper home, you usually get lower bills for utilities, repairs, insurance, and property taxes. I know that when I moved from a 3,000 square foot house to an 1,8000 square foot house, I paid a lot less for lots of things! In my opinion, these lower bills were a big relief!

I do consider exchanging my house for a rented apartment. I could reduce a lot of my bills. I still would need some sort of renter's policy, but this coverage will cost less than home coverage!

It would be a lot easier to care for an apartment home, and that would give me more time to do things I wanted to do! Mowing a lawn and fixing a leaky pipe are never high on my list of things I enjoy doing!

I do have a lot of things I have collected over the years. But many of these things sit in boxes in my garage. I probably could sort through these things, and give away or discard most of them without ruining my life! If I had to, I could probably get a good storage unit for an affordable price.

My company proved to be flexible. They managed to sleep on a futon or mattress. When a lot of people visited, with a whole family, I would pay for their motel room. It was still cheaper to offer to put up family in a motel than it was to pay for higher bills every month!

It may make sense for you to keep your old house. Lots of retirees do enjoy a downsized home!

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