As you get older, it’s only natural that you should start thinking about retirement. Granted, I’m not yet near the age where I plan to retire, but I still think about it sometimes. I think what it will be like when my children grow up and move out. I think about where we are going to live. Naturally, we won’t keep the house we raised the children in. It will be too big and vast for just two people. We will need a smaller home where we can live peacefully away from the hustle and bustle of life. However, that’s not the place I’d start planning my retirement. My first thought would be towards saving some money.

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Saving To Retire

I know the world is constantly shifting and changing, sometimes it’s hard to keep up, but I am doing my best to keep track of the economy. More specifically I try to understand where it will be twenty years down the line when I might retire. That’s why I’ve started saving for my retirement now. It’s not enough just to put a little each year into your pension. You have to be doing everything you can to make sure you have money when you stop working. You want to make sure your life is comfortable and not a burden on your children. You must make sure you are prepared. These days, you’re encouraged to start planning for retirement in your twenties and there is certainly good reason for that.

Downscaling

The next thing I have recently been thinking about is where I would like to retire to. I think I’d like to go somewhere near the ocean, along the beach, but I also don’t want it to be too detached from society. I also suppose it depends on where my children end up living. I don’t want to be too far away from them because one day; I hope they have children. I can’t wait to be a grandmother. It seems like motherhood without the stress of your children being completely reliant on you.

When you think about downscaling you should look for a retirement home for sale online. You can complete specific searches to find places where the elderly settle down in their twilight years. It’s important to live around people in your age group to stay sociable.

Getting The Home

Don’t forget that when you downsize, you’ll be buying a new, smaller home, but, if you can sell your old house at a good price, you’ll have quite a lot of money leftover to use for your retirement. That’s why a couple of years before you retire you should be thinking about making some improvements to your house. Keep these low cost but do everything you can to increase the perceived value of your home. Some ideas could be to repaint the walls a beautiful cream colour. This will make your home look bigger and encourage people to think of your house as a blank canvas. 

You are supposed to be able to relax when you retire. That might be easier said than done when your financial situation is unstable. To stabilise it, you can take out a reverse mortgage on your home. One of the upsides of a reverse mortgage is you choose when you pay it back, with some stipulations. You have no regular mortgage payments to make.

However, you must also consider downsides of a reverse mortgage before signing such an agreement. For example, the agreement requires you to stay in the home for as long as you have a loan balance. Moving out triggers the full balance to be called in. The long-term nature of a reverse mortgage also means you pay more interest on it in the long run than you would on a traditional mortgage.

I know it probably seems like light years before you have to start thinking about this, but be careful because it will certainly creep on you.