Early in his new book on retirement strategies, financial planner and professor Jamie Hopkins introduces the idea of reverse mortgages as a potential part of long-term retirement planning — and he quickly anticipates the potential backlash. “Let me preface this by pleading with you to continue to read and not give in to your urge […]

A recent analysis from the Social Security Administration shows that American seniors rely heavily on federal benefits in retirement — often in the absence of any other income source. About a quarter of U.S. residents aged 65 and older lived in households that drew 90% or more of their income from Social Security alone in […]

One of the most prominent scholarly advocates for using reverse mortgages in retirement laid out a case last week for finding opportunity in the volatile stock market. “A reverse mortgage helps preserve a portfolio and gives it a chance to recover,” Wade Pfau, professor at the American College of Financial Services, said at the 2018 […]

Putting off retirement planning is common among healthy seniors — to the point where a substantial majority of them would rather think about dying than how to plot out their remaining living years. Three-quarters of respondents to a survey from Home Instead, Inc., a home health provider, said they felt more comfortable thinking about funeral […]

Reverse mortgages have long been touted as solutions to some retirees’ long-term financial plans, but using equity as a retirement asset may still be a foreign concept in the courtroom. Writing in Forbes, financial planning writer Robert Laura points out that in legal settings, one’s retirement picture could require detailed explanations — such as in […]

Many studies have explored the ways in which current seniors find themselves ill-prepared for their retirement years, but a new analysis from Boston College finds that the picture looks even bleaker for future generations. The vast majority of households aged 65 and older reported not having to make financial cutbacks when faced with two key […]

Americans with 401(k)s have had reason to celebrate the last two years, as record stock market performance has inflated retirees’ nest eggs. But despite all the sunny news, a huge swath of Americans is missing out, according to a Thursday post from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. The CRR, which has written […]