If you have recently loss your spouse, please accept my deepest condolences. Although we all know we and our spouse will pass on one day, nothing quite prepares you for the emotional trauma.
I have helped thousands of families and the one thing I have witnessed is that the surviving spouse usually suffers significant financial trauma in addition to the emotional trauma. When one spouse passes, the surviving spouse will usually lose a significant amount of monthly income and incur higher day to day cost for several reasons:
-They will lose the lower of their two social security payments.
-They may lose a pension or part of a pension.
-They will certainly lose any part time income their deceased spouse had been earning.
-They may now have to ‘pay for repairs or services’ the deceased spouse had been performing.
-Most likely their food and basic utility expense will remain the same.
-And of course the survivor must endure the extra expense of the funeral and burial services.
For all of these reasons, the surviving spouse usually suffers quite a bit of financial trauma in addition to emotional trauma of losing your life partner and will need to find some additional source of money if they hope to make financial ends meet.
The best solution is to immediately reduce your expenses and/or increase your income and even better if you can do both at the same time. But how?
The Reverse Mortgage has proven to be the number one tool of choice for many reasons:
-It does eliminate any monthly mortgage payment you may have and thereby saves a significant amount of money each and every month (there is no payment due until you cease to live in the home).
-It may provide a significant amount of money available to you, either on a monthly basis or on an ‘as needed’ basis, whatever you would prefer.
-The qualifying is very easy and mostly depends upon your age (at least one of the spouses must be 62) and the value of your home.
With a Reverse Mortgage, it is also important to note that you continue to keep and own the home, just as you do now and will still pass the home on to your heirs when you pass, again just as you would without a Reverse Mortgage.
Since the very largest amount of your total wealth is stuck in the equity of your home, it makes good sense to make sure some of it is available to you and/or your spouse incase this extra income is needed during retirement while either both of you are alive and well to enjoy it, or have it there as a safety net in the event one of you passes and the survivor needs it to make financial ends meet when they are on their own.
Please feel free to reach out to me with any and all questions (remember, no question is too small or too silly to ask) or any of our free reports on how to better prepare or how to live better during retirement.
Sincerely,
Bryon Pyle
Pres.
About the author
Since graduating with a business degree in Finance in 1981, Bryon Pyle has been involved in mortgage lending and has focused on helping individuals improve their cash flow and obtain the American dream, homeownership. From helping thousands and thousands of clients, Bryon has been able to see how the bedrock of America handles their finances. Alarmingly, most Americans do themselves a tremendous disservice by making a series of poor choices. Most Americans arrive at retirement age with a severely underfunded retirement plan and no time left to redirect themselves, yet continue to make poor or uninformed retirement choices. Approx. 72% take Social Security before they reach full retirement age. Many pay too much in income taxes on their retirement savings due to poor planning. Too few know or understand how to maximize what they have to help provide the highest amount of access to cash/cash flow while minimizing their taxes and other outflows. Our goal at Crossmark Financial is to provide safe, well thought-out solutions and support that improves cash flow and provides greater access to cash in the safest manner possible. We have written extensively along these topics and encourage clients and advisors like to obtain and read our reports in the hopes that together we can help clients’ improve their financial retirement well-being.
