With all due respect, you’re asking a bunch of bloggers for a personal decision. It seems pretty evident that based on your description of your health, the last thing you need is more stress and additional work hours.
My 2cents…
From what I see, I don’t think you are in bad financial shape. Doesn’t sound like you can just quit and retire, but nevertheless you probably can maintain a relatively good income by reducing your hours. There’s nothing wrong with downsizing.
The question of whether home prices will fall or go up is irrelevant for your particular situation, or how much you can possibly squeeze out of your home selling now or later etc. If it makes your expenses more manageable and allows you to work less so you have more time to take care of your health so you can live logner, so be it. Better working at 50% capacity than dead working at 0% capacity.
If your’re really worried about kealing over soon and you haven’ done so already, consider buying life insurance while you still can….To be frank (no sugar coating), it’s probably not going to be cheap for you, given your bloodpressure…. but it’s a small price to pay if something DID unexpectedly happen. And it will definitely be cheaper now than when you get older….Perhaps keep it simple, termed life insurance policy. There are other products (variable annuity/whole life,etc) that “blend” insurance with an “investment component…” However, unless you a financial wizard and/or have the time and patience to understand how those plans work, you probably want to stay away from those insurance+investment packages. There are tax advantages for those plans, but most of those advantages are for the really really rich who want to shelter income from inheritance taxes etc. Although it probably doesn’t apply to you, if you were a salaried employee, it’s probably a good idea to buy life insurance independent from what your employer will offer you, simply because you probably won’t work with the same employer or working forever…unless you are sure what your employer offers can carry forward *without increased premiums* even after you are no longer their employees….The worst thing you could do is to buy a life insurance policy from an employer, work for 10 years,get laidoff at 50, and then discover that for you to continue your life insurance policy, you need to pay $XXXX more due to your older age…….Buy as much as you can while people are still willing to underwrite you, something $1million+…No joke…Especially if you are a single income family and have kids that need to go to college and aren’t counting on an inheritance from your relatives… I regret that I didn’t when I could.
While I support the notion of a stay at home parent, you’re wife *might* want to consider taking up some light job/profession when the kids start getting older and when they can take care of themselves (highschool age/college)… not because you folks sound like you need the money…But if something *did* happen to you, the last thing you would want your wife to deal is not being able to take care of herself financially or her family from the financial aspects and having to depend on another person for financial support. Also, if she is involved with work (especially is if she finds something she enjoys doing), it can occupy her time so as not to feel as lonely when the kids grow up and you folks are empty nests. Maybe you can open a private practice, and have her help you. Don’t know… you seem have more flexibility than a lot of salaried folks. There is an added bonus that if she works for a big company, their is health insurance at a nominal cost to you, irrespective of you or your wife’s health condition.
Also, look on the bright side… You have high blood pressure. You have some time to take care of it. You’re timeclock isn’t quite as short as someone that has cancer or something like that is immediately malignant that requires removal of damaged organs/etc.
