I'd really like some advice for my mum.
My Dad died nearly 10 years ago - he'd been the main earner and had worked hard all his life, but at a minimum wage job. He left mum with his retirement savings (maybe $100k) and a paid off house, but no life insurance.
Mum was the SAHM when we were young and has worked part-time hours (also minimum wage) for probably the last 20 years. So she has no debt, she's pretty frugal, she has a paid for home and some savings in the bank.
The situation is that mum is hitting retirement age. When she turns 65 she's entitled to government superannuation - which is a bit more than she currently earns each week (yay!). She lives 4-5 hours away from where all of her children live and we'd all really like her to move closer to us, particularly as she gets older. Unfortunately, there's a big difference between the value of houses where she lives and where we all live - and there's a boom happening where we live with high demand for houses and not many on the market. She can't really afford to spend much more on buying a house here, than she can get for selling her house there. None of us are in a position to really help her financially - we're all in our 30's working on paying off our own mortgages.
Part of me says "sell your house so you have cash in hand, move down here and stay with your children (there are four households of us) and wait for a property to come along". But she's really worried about selling, the market continuing to climb in value, and her not being able to afford to buy again (and there is actually a risk of that).
How would others work their way through this? Would appreciate your thoughts.