Sell your house and rent in retirement

If you plan to sell your home and rent in retirement, Beyond Payday models the whole move: at the age you choose, the projection sells your home, pays off the remaining mortgage, adds the net proceeds to your nest egg, and starts charging rent — with its own inflation rate — for the rest of the plan.

Before you start

• Retirement planning is a Pro feature (included in the 30-day trial).
• Your home should be tracked as an asset (a Real Estate category) with a current value — the projection uses that value.
• If you have a mortgage, track it as a debt linked to the house. That link is how the projection knows what to pay off at the sale.
• You need permission to update retirement settings (the account owner always has it).

Steps

1. Go to Retirement (opens in a new tab) and open the Real Estate settings card.
2. Turn on Sell or downsize your home.
3. Set Age you sell — it defaults to your retirement age, but you can sell earlier or later.
4. Choose the Rent instead tab (next to Buy a smaller home).
5. Enter Monthly rent in today's dollars.
6. Leave Rent goes up each year on (recommended) and set the Yearly rent increase to your own estimate for how fast rent rises each year.
7. Review How fast home values rise each year (your home's growth until the sale) and Costs to sell (% of price) (default 6%).
8. Scroll up to the projection chart — you'll see the sale as a milestone, and your portfolio and spending update from that age forward.

How the projection handles it

• Sale price: your home's current value, grown by how fast home values rise each year until the sale age.
• Net proceeds: sale price minus the cost to sell minus the remaining mortgage balance. The mortgage payoff is automatic and logged as a milestone, and the monthly payment ends there.
• Taxes: any gain on the sale gets the federal primary-residence exclusion (up to $250,000 single / $500,000 married filing jointly) before tax is estimated.
• After the sale: the net proceeds join your retirement portfolio and grow with it. The home leaves your asset picture — its value is now in the nest egg instead.
• Rent: starts the month of the sale at the amount you entered, and — if Rent goes up each year is on — rises every year at your yearly rent increase rate, both before and throughout retirement.

Good to know

• Compare renting vs. buying smaller in seconds. Flip between Rent instead and Buy a smaller home — the projection recalculates instantly, so you can compare ending balances for both paths.
• Only your primary home sale is modeled. Other properties stay as assets; a second property sale isn't natively supported yet.
• Enter rent in today's dollars. The inflation setting projects it forward for you — don't pre-inflate it yourself.
• Rent keeps inflating through retirement. That's the big trade-off vs. owning, and it's why the same rent that looks cheap at 65 can dominate your spending at 85. The projection makes that visible.
• Guided setup covers this too. The setup wizard's Your home step asks the same question. See Set up your retirement plan with guided setup.
• Pro members can ask Beth things like "what does selling my house at 62 and renting do to my plan?" once these settings are in place.