Where You Live Matters: Housing and Retirement Planning

Where You Live Matters: Housing and Retirement Planning, examines an often-overlooked retirement planning question: whether a client's home and community will continue to support the life they want to live throughout retirement.

This presentation introduces a Place Planning framework built around four interconnected factors, Health, Community, Environment and Finances, and shows advisors how longevity, health changes, family circumstances, transportation, social connection and access to care can affect later-life housing decisions.

Participants will evaluate four common housing pathways including staying in the current home, modifying it, relocating, or changing housing type or community. We will then connect those objectives to funding decisions by examining potential resources including cash flow, portfolio assets, sale proceeds, traditional debt, insurance or family resources, home equity and reverse mortgages. Case studies illustrate how advisors can evaluate tradeoffs among available funding approaches based on client objectives, liquidity and cash-flow needs.

The presentation concludes with a practical advisor framework for discovering client needs, evaluating housing alternatives, funding the preferred path and reviewing the plan as circumstances change.

Competency Level: Intermediate
FPA Competency: Critical Thinking
CFP Board Topic: Retirement Savings & Income Planning
CFP Board CE Credit Hours:

• Identify health, community, environmental and financial factors that can affect a client's housing needs and preferences throughout retirement.
• Evaluate staying in place, modifying an existing residence, relocating or changing housing type as components of a comprehensive retirement plan.
• Compare home equity strategies, including reverse mortgages, with other financial resources for funding housing, care, liquidity and relocation needs in retirement.