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A retiree’s dilemma: Pay off the mortgage or preserve super?

In an environment of rising housing costs, more Australians are entering retirement before their home mortgage is fully repaid. This leads to the question of how a retiree should approach housing debt.

The 2024 How Australia Retires report by Vanguard found that 32% of its Generation X survey respondents expect to retire with a mortgage, with 38% of those planning to keep making mortgage payments after leaving work, 18% planning to sell their home, and 25% planning to use superannuation to repay the debt.

So which strategy is best?

We’ll cover what to consider when choosing whether to keep money in super or use it to pay off the mortgage and how selling your home could be a viable alternative.

Mortgage vs super

A fully paid mortgage offers the security of lower housing costs, but could keeping money in super instead leave retirees better off financially?

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