First post and using a throwaway for privacy. In a nutshell, my wife is dying of stomach cancer, metastasized to her brain -- she has months left -- and I need some advice. Here are the details:
Her salary is ~$75,000/year. She's on disability now, currently 80% of salary, dropping to 60% in a couple weeks and then no salary 8 weeks later. I make about $110,000/year, sometimes plus a 10% bonus. We have two children under age 10.
We've had a lot of expenses due to her illness. Two credit cards, balances are $15,000 and $7,000. I have been paying these down as best I can. We also have a big mortgage. We owe maybe $250,000 (we're paying roughly $2,000/month) and a home equity loan with a $30,000 balance due to home improvements we made several years ago. I have slowly been paying that off too. We also have about $20,000 in annual child care expenses and obviously those can't go away. There's nothing else beyond general gas, water, elec every month.
We have about $1.5 million in various retirement vehicles. In addition, she has $150,000 in life insurance through work and I have a $50,000 spouse policy for her from my job.
Should I pay penalties to use some of the retirement funds to pay off the credit cards and the mortgage? Should I sell the house and significantly downsize? I don't really want to further disrupt my kids' lives but I'm seriously concerned that I'm not going to be able to pay the bills once I become a single parent.
Thanks to all those who offer advice.
Submitted February 17, 2017 at 02:03PM by notarealnerfgun http://ift.tt/2m4gruN
