Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread

[Kaan]

For those of you mapping out your retirement, how are you handling home equity?

I would think it'd be a wash if you plan to stay in your current home, but maybe I've got a skewed perspective in that I think most people would downsize and/or live somewhere cheaper. Given I don't want to own a home when I'm retired, I'm thinking I should be counting equity. Then again, I guess that means I'd also have a rent payment.

You can't really use it in online calculators because it applies the growth rate to all assets - the stock market isn't gonna do the same thing as the housing market. Maybe just count it as a free year or two of income but leave it out otherwise?

I think we want to still "own" home base... without a payment (outside of taxes). I call it home base, because we want to travel as much as we can while we can (even in retirement) but its got to hold most of our normal stuff... single level, smaller (under 1500 sqft), etc.