Earlier this week, a quick recap of a Forbes article about retirement risk — one in which the author claimed that reverse mortgages are products of “last resort” — generated some lively discussion in the Reverse Mortgage Daily comment section. The thrust of the Forbes article was that Home Equity Conversion Mortgages are one form […]

Much of retirement planning is predicated on household wealth — which, in the United States and especially among members of the Greatest Generation and baby-boom cohorts, has traditionally meant money controlled by married couples. But a new study suggests that long-term changes in behavior, even among boomers, could signal that it’s time to separate the […]

Concerns over the future of Social Security play a starring role in American seniors’ overall retirement uncertainty — and that’s before considering how much of the benefit might eventually need to go toward unexpected medical expenses. After factoring in supplemental insurance premiums and other uninsured health costs, the average retiree only takes home 75% of […]

Reverse mortgage professionals frequently run into the perception that the products themselves are simply “bad” — either based on a potential borrower’s experience with the loans in real life, or through decades of media coverage. But one financial planner says it’s best to abandon the idea of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage as a “good” […]

The Employer Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974 introduced the American public to the Individual Retirement Account  with a lofty goal: helping retirees who didn’t have pensions or other  employer-sponsored programs to save for retirement. But according to a recent analysis from the team at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the […]

Retirement planning generally involves the balancing of potential risks to achieve the best outcome for a client. Over at The Retirement Cafe, blogger Dirk Cotton sees nearly 30 of them to consider, including both forward and reverse mortgage issues. Cotton identifies “housing problem risk” — including rises in mortgage payments, refinancing problems, property taxes, and […]

The surge of positive news about reverse mortgages north of the border continues, this time with a personal finance columnist at a major Canadian newspaper telling readers to ditch their reluctance and embrace home equity as a potential retirement strategy. “It’s time to take a fresh look at the reverse mortgage and get over the […]