Have you looked at the value of your real estate lately? On this episode of “Your Money, Your Wealth,” CPA “Big Al” Clopine and CFP® Joe Anderson show you how to tap into your home equity so that you can utilize it as a retirement asset. Dr. Steven Sass from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College joins the show to discuss the pros and cons of using a reverse mortgage and who should consider using it. Learn what an emergency fund (or plan B) fund is and why it is Joe and Al’s favorite method of using home equity for retirement.
Download Dr. Steven Sass’ booklet on reverse mortgages, “Using Your House for Income in Retirement”
0:41 “Retirement planning has to change; there are a lot of people who are not prepared and you have to think outside of the box today, to get you the income you need”
3:40 “[Emergency fund] is kind of like plan B if you will, in other words only accessing it if you need to with long term care or some kind of health event”
6:30 “Nowadays you get a $500,000 exclusion if you’re married or $250,000 exclusion if you’re single, meaning the first part of your gain is completely tax-free”
6:56 “Here’s the rule: you can only do this once with property taxes, but you can downsize. You can buy a home equal to or cheaper than the home you’re currently in and as long as you or your spouse are 55 years of age or older, you can keep that same property tax base”
7:48 “Prop 60 allows you to carry over your old bases one time as long as that property is a little lower in value”
11:33 “A lot of households are going to be hitting retirement and they’re going to be surprised with how little they have to maintain their standard of living”
14:49 “Realize that a reverse mortgage is where you’re getting money, it’s kind of the reverse of a regular mortgage so you get dollars, different ways to receive it, and you don’t have to pay the mortgage back until you move or you sell your home or you pass away”
15:44 “For some of you that may want to bridge the gap to social security, you could take a reverse mortgage out at 62, get some income and you could push your social security out to age 70, per say”
16:47 “[Line of credit] is the most flexible because you can take a partial lump sum now, you could get a payment stream later, and also you could take another lump sum at another point in time”
23:20 “Having that large equity is like having a safety net”
23:44 “What instructions should I leave for my beneficiaries so that they will claim their inheritance (IRAS) once I die?”
