Pros and Cons of Retiring With Debt
When planning for retirement, one of the biggest hurdles you’ll face is deciding whether to retire with or without debt. Debt can be a strong wealth-building tool, but it carries risks you may not want to have in retirement. However, determining its importance will ultimately come down to your risk tolerance and retirement goals. Today, we’ll explore the pros and cons of debt to help you decide if debt is suitable for your retirement.
Bad Debt, Better Debt
Okay, you made a mistake of carrying your credit card balance over one month. So what? It’s just a month. Next, you continued to carry that balance over one more month. No problem, you’ll pay it off in the 3rd month for sure. Uh oh, time has really gotten away, and now it’s been an entire year, and that balance has really grown! Now you’re in a real pickle and don’t know how to stop the vicious cycle. How will you get out of this cycle?
With $8,200,000 In Debt, When Will I Be Debt Free?
In my previous post where I shared my $10 million FIRE goal by age 40, I mentioned that my investment allocation will be 30% in real estate. That’s $3M of my own cash invested in rental properties, and I fully intend to leverage that $3M as much as possible, leaving me with a whopping $7M of debt! That doesn’t even include my current $1.2M jumbo mortgage for my primary residence, which would have a remaining balance of around $900K by then. That leaves me asking myself, “After voluntarily acquiring $8.2M in debt, how long will it take before I become debt-free?”