re: Pension Lump sum question

keep the pension. Use the pension payments to pay the mortgage, then when the mortgage is paid off look at the pension payments as a form of cost of living increase on your income. U can't rush a mortgage, they take time to payoff. don't sweat it

I moved mine to an IRA. Reason was the CBP formula was paying a lower interest rate on the balance. Moving it to an IRA allowed me more flexibility around locking in long terms rates. If I had kept it in the CBP, it would have paid about 2.5% this year.

Once again thanks to all of you with your views. Pretty easy to see, judging by your comments, I was pushing myself to do the wrong move from nothing but fear of the unknown (future).

Coincidently my wife and I attended a retirement seminar last night to get even more info. Obviously looks like it's not a bad choice to get a professional fiduciary to help us get out financial portfolio better aligned with our vision of retirement.
Upside of attending was realizing how woefully unprepared I am in my knowledge of all things financially connected to retirement while enjoying a delicious elk tenderloin on their dollar. ;)

Thanks again to the board for helping out in this confusing area of non-expertise.

Any thoughts on fixing Auburn's pathetic passing game....since you fellas are on a roll? LOL

You are aged 60, which means you can get your IRA's or 401K's without a penalty.

If I were in your shoes, I would roll the pension over to an IRA. Right now you could leave it in a money market fund and get 5% plus. Then, I would look at what my highest marginal tax bracket is and, if it makes sense, take out enough money from the IRA or 401K to make accelerated house payments without getting too much of that money taxed. In other words, if the money is going to be taxed at 32% or higher, I'm not doing it. I would pay the house off slowly and take comfort in the fact that I have enough money to do it if I want to. Since you plan to quit working in a few years, you may be able to have a year with no or very low income in which you can withdraw a lot more money from your IRA/401K to put towards the house.

It's not always about the math though. Sometimes you just want to be free of the debt.

I will be in a similar situation in 2025. I am already retired (more like just quit going to work) but there is a big chunk of retirement funds that I won't get until early 2025, which is also when I turn 59.5. Depending on the situation, I might accelerate payments on the house or I might just keep paying the payments but structure my assets so that I can minimize the taxes. In particular, I might do Roth conversions for a few years to pump up the Roth in order to pay off the house without bumping up into a higher tax bracket in about 2030-32, depending on stock market returns between then and now.

My interest rate is 2.625%, and although it isn't just about the math, I'd rather funnel as much money into an HSA as I can until I reach 65.