WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

[CrispsnDips]

Husband and I are late 50’s..both working, earning a total of around £52,000 gross PA. Savings of £100,000. Two rental properties bringing in extra income. We have around £40,000 left on our mortgage (house value = £575,000). What would you do? Buy another rental? Pay off mortgage? Travel? Buy a bigger house? Buy a smaller house and retire?

Just interested…

Pay off mortgage, retire, travel. Sell what you need to in order to do that. I retired last year (early) and a week later my husband had two strokes. He will never return to work full time and I've gone back to work so that our lifestyle can re,aim much the same.

Travel and spend time together. Live in a nice house that's big enough. Enjoy life now, don't wait for tomorrow.

Thank you! Life is short isn’t it? I’m sorry your hubby has suffered two strokes…no-one knows what’s round the corner, do they? A couple we know are selling up and buying in Cyprus (late 50’s) but she has MS and I think they’re enjoying life while they are still able to.

Bless you for having to return to work…hope it’s going ok?

You don't mention pension provision . That information would help me decide . Whatever it is though I would not buy another buy to let . There is more and more red tape and squeeze on landlords and I don't want the aggravation.
Travel and live off your pension : savings is always great and having just heard about a friend of a friend drop dead at 51 of a heart attack take nothing for granted

@CrispsnDips yes I've been lucky and got an admin role with the local council so I'm planning to overpay my pension and retire early again at some point!

What a hard question to answer, depends on so many circumstances, do you enjoy your jobs? What is your lifestyle, what do you enjoy doing? How big is your current house and how suitable for retirement, both layout and location? Any DC to support on either side and what are their circumstances? How's your pension provision aside from the savings/BTLs?

If you are purely asking what I'd do, we're not in totally dissimilar circumstances, I wouldn't retire yet but that's because DH and I are lucky enough to both enjoy our jobs and have reached a nice stage in our careers where the input/stress to reward ratio is pretty nice so we're enjoying that while it lasts and in no hurry to rush away. But we are planning to wind down gradually over the next 10 years or so, ideally going part-time and picking up some interesting/lucrative freelance type opportunities if available or some voluntary work to fill in gaps if not. Depending on your mortgage rate/term I wouldn't worry too much about paying such a small mortgage off early but instead I would max out pensions, particularly any workplace ones with any spare income, and potentially look into other more liquid funds such as ISAs or other investment funds, esp if you might soon be wanting to access lump sums e.g. to support adult children (key factor for us).

Housing I'd be making a plan to move to somewhere suitably sized and a good location for retirement again in the next 10 years or so, not necessarily right away, depending on circs. I wouldn't buy any more BTLs for all the reasons pp says and if you need access to the capital to find retirement would actually be starting to look at the exit/sale strategy for them e.g. whether with forward planning you can avoid CGT. And yes, obviously, also enjoy yourself a bit too, holidays, hobbies, taking life a bit easier at work, whatever is on your bucket list...

I would stop working and start travelling, especially in the winter when the fuel bills will be higher.

Either sell up the home and move somewhere smaller to pay of the £40k

Or use savings to pay off the mortgage now before the interest rate rises.

leaving yourselves with the income from 2 rental properties and no mortgages.

Persure hobbies, travelling or things you enjoy

Thank you for some fab responses…don’t suppose we’ll get round to doing anything just yet. We both enjoy working, don’t have stressful jobs at the minute.

I was just really interested to know what others would do, it feels as if we have lots of options …but we do have two teenagers to support through Uni from next September onwards so need to consider that. Plus the hubby wants our children to eventually inherit as much as possible, it’s all about them, not us so there will probably be no “SKI-ING” Spending the Kids Inheritance 🤣

1. buy another rental to boost post-retirement income
2. pay off mortgage
3. retire
4. live happily ever after having whatever adventures you fancy

Plus the hubby wants our children to eventually inherit as much as possible, it’s all about them, not us so there will probably be no “SKI-ING” Spending the Kids Inheritance

keep working until retirement age or beyond
look at getting another rental property, possibly in the university town/city where your teens are heading
get advice on IHT get wills and POA sorted

I wouldn't buy another rental property just at the moment for a few reasons:
I can't see how house prices won't fall with the huge increases in utilities.
I think more tenants (even tenants that have been great in the past) are going to get behind with their rent as they try to meet huge energy costs.

Are your rentals EPC of C or above. They will need to be in the future (unless they are exempt for some reason). If not it might be a good time to use some of your savings to upgrade them to get a C and your tenants can enjoy the benefit of improvements on their bills.

I would keep a big buffer as I think things might be choppy in the next year or two. Perhaps plan to keep 100k savings so try to replace what you spend. Overpay the mortgage only with income not savings.

You obviously have loads going for you financially but it's not impossible that at some point you could gave one property vacant, one with a non paying tenant and a kid at uni. That's before life events like illness or redundancy or economic like recession. Enjoy your comfortable finances but take nothing for granted.