All Forum Posts by: Drake Roberts

Thanks for the comments. Although I thought about renting it to help off set the costs, I'd rather just keep it for our use and for close friends/relatives if possible. My wife works out of the house so we figured we could easily just flip flop between our house in the Bay Area and the Tahoe place as long as she has an internet connection so she can still work.

I've also given the thought of just renting a place when we want one (like we have always done) vs buying a place. Obviously it's a lot cheaper to just rent one when we need it. 

I know no one can answer this but I guess I'm looking for advice or prior experience with this. I recently retired at the age of 55 and live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Financially, I'm secure with a guaranteed retirement income for the rest of my life, I also have my last child almost out of college without any loans and our current home ($600,000 value) is almost paid off. 

Since retiring I've found that I'm easily able to save $2,000. a month for no real reason. I already have around $750,000 in cash and stock investments which I don't for see needing since I already have a comfortable retirement package. Once our house is paid off I'll have another $1,100. a month that's available.

My wife and I have always vacationed in the Lake Tahoe area and always thought about buying a second home there. The only problem is I hate the idea of starting a mortgage again but at the same time I could certainly use the mortgage deduction. I'd love to be able buy a place (single family cabin or condo) and keep my housing costs (mortgage, taxes, HOA) under $2,000 a month. This put's me in the $350,000 price range.

Having been a saver all my life I'm now in a position to spend it but I'm a little hesitant of jumping into a second home that comes with all the pro's and con's of home ownership of a vacation home. Has anyone else out there been in this same dilemma? The more I look into this the more I hear stories from people that have had bad experiences. Thanks for any thoughts.