Hello everyone,
I could really use some advice. I'm trying to help my 74 year old mom with her finances. She is thinking about selling her house and I don't know if that is the best course of action. Here's the relevant info:
Mom is 74. Husband passed away 5 years ago. My parents weren't very financially literate and don't have any retirement savings. She lives in FL.
The house is a little more than 1800 sq ft and there is about $123,000 remaining on the mortgage at a 4.625% interest rate. Her monthly payment is about $767.
Besides her mortgage, the only other debt she has consists of about $9500 of credit card debt (split among 5 cards).
Her monthly bills including food, water, electricity, internet, phone, etc total about $500/mo.
In addition to monthly bills she also has:
- Property taxes - $325 every 3 months
- House insurance - $1500 every year
- Car insurance - $525 every 6 months.
She also recently had a small dental emergency and it looks like that is going to cost about $1700.
Her only income consists of social security which is about $1740 / month.
She has about $8000 between bank accounts and cash.
She is thinking of selling the house because she thinks it is too big for her and it is in need of some work that she can't do and that she doesn't think she will have the money to get done. For example, she said it needed a new roof. She may have lucked out, because due to a recent hail storm, she was able to get about $15k from insurance for that, so it looks like that may be solved. But the bathroom also needs some work, there are problems with the tub and shower not working properly. I really don't know the details or what it would take to fix, if she is looking at a whole new tub or piping? Home repair is really not my forte. The AC also died recently and thankfully I have some money put aside so I bought her a new AC system.
She has a friend who is a realtor who thinks with a new roof she could list the house for $205,000 (though Zillow estimates $259,000).
She also recently got an offer from Chase to refinance her mortgage to 3.078% which would make the monthly payment about $523/mo.
I know this is not the ideal financial situation for someone her age to be in. What do you think she should do? Would it be wise to sell the house, maybe pocket $50k and move into an apartment? Or buy something else like a condo?
She's been in the house 40+ years. I don't know if she should sell. The one intangible is that her neighbors have also been there for nearly just as long and they help each other when needed.
What do you all think would be the best course of action? What would you do in this situation? Sorry for the long post, but I hope I provided enough details.
Submitted May 31, 2021 at 09:48PM by lostinflorida315 https://ift.tt/3wKI6VD
