This retirement gig of mine is a carefully orchestrated affair, at least financially. I kind of need things to go reasonably smoothly the next four years or I will have to get the dreaded part time job and you know how I feel about that.
My former employer, Tedious Systems, has thrown the first monkey wrench into my plans. I got a notice yesterday that my health insurance will be one third higher than I paid as an employee. No one told me that retirees pay more than employees, but it turns out to be the case.
Don't get me wrong here, I really appreciate having access to health insurance that is reasonably affordable, but my carefully crafted budget anticipated a lower cost. This development threatens to cut into my walking around money and I have a busy social schedule to keep.
I am also contemplating paying off Casa Sneed at the first of the year. I have stashed away enough money in the past four years, during my second stint with Tedious, to pay it off. I will have to pay taxes on the money, because it was in a 401K, but I am paying taxes on it sometime, so I might as well get it over and be free of the house payment. I don't have a penalty for taking the money out since I retired after 55 years of age. Also, because we no longer will have enough deductions to itemize on our taxes, the interest deduction the mortgage generates does not factor into the decision.
I can't think of a reason not to payoff the house. Our principal and interest on the house loan is about $690 and the savings that I plan to use to pay off the loan would only generate $400 per month if I left it in savings. It seems like a net $300 monthly savings to me.
I have an emotion reason that makes me hesitate. Like most emotion reasons, it makes no practical sense though. I simply like having that money and I don't like to spend it, even if it is the right thing to do in the long run. This always happens to me.
Mrs. Sneed refers to our savings as "the vault", because she claims we put money in but I never want to take it out. Maybe, maybe not.
I'm off to have lunch with my friend Lonnie. We have a new member of our lunch group. We used to see an old couple every week at our usual place and over time we became acquainted with them. The wife died a few weeks ago at 89 year old and the husband, Charlie, who is 90 has asked if we mind having him join us every Friday. He is a retire Army Colonel and has a million stories to tell. Since Lonnie and I have been having lunch every Friday for years and years now, we are glad to have someone interject a bit of life into our lunches. Plus Charlie is just a genuinely nice guy.
Have a great day.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor
2 comments:
I didn't quite follow that, but it sounds like you already know what to do.
I think you're going to need some help opening up that vault.
Ok I'm glad Kurt said it first, I'm not following that either. I do have a question... isn't it a good idea to just keep paying down the mortgage, but for tax purposes keep it? But then I'm not retired yet so I don't know how the tax setup changes.
If you set up a business of any kind you can write everything off, so I guess if I had a chunk of change I would go the small business route. Home office freelance route works too..
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