A sibling’s recent health scare played a large part in your decision to retire from full time work at the end of first quarter 2026, you admit. You will be taking early retirement from a executive-level corporate position; your wife will be leaving her position as a school administrator. While the final decision to retire was recent, for years, now, you’ve been putting the pieces in place to embark on the next phase of your lives.
Handy with tools, you’ve kept your home, a ranch house in a comfortable, very friendly neighborhood, in top notch condition, and hope to spend the rest of your lives there. Your mortgage was retired a decade ago, at which point you began diverting all extra dollars to maximizing contributions to both retirement plans and to building up your jointly held investment account. You have updated your estate planning documents and continued funding a “hybrid” life insurance policy that can be tapped for long term care needs.
Despite all these very reassuring preparations – and, both despite and because of – the wonderful growth in your stock funds in the past couple years, you’re concerned about beginning to withdraw funds on a monthly or quarterly basis. Many articles you’ve read talk about the “sequence of returns”, and, with the markets “at an all-time high”, the rising costs of food, and all the political changes happening just as you’re about to retire, you feel there is real cause for concern. One pending choice is whether one of you or both should take early Social Security benefits beginning next year.
One important retirement planning resource you haven’t mentioned is your housing wealth. Applying now for a reverse mortgage on your home will create an alternative source of monthly or quarterly income, allowing your retirement accounts to “weather” any market turbulence. Because withdrawals from your equity would be tax free,* fewer dollar might be needed. By setting up the reverse mortgage loan as an equity line of credit, you’ll have stop-and-start flexibility in terms of withdrawals. In fact, your ability to draw money from your home equity will allow you to benefit from market dips by adding to your investment portfolio. Meanwhile, the un-borrowed portion of your Home Equity Conversion Mortgage line of credit would grow at the same rate as that being charged on the loan itself.
Far from being a ‘last resort”, your housing wealth can offer you increased flexibility in the face of market swings and the timing of social security benefits, with reverse mortgage funding moved to the “front of your retirement resource “line”
https://mutualreverse.com/david-garrison
*Please consult a tax advisor. David Garrison, NMLS ID 1595194. Mutual of Omaha Mortgage, Inc. dba Mutual of Omaha Reverse Mortgage, NMLS ID 1025894. 3131 Camino Del Rio N 1100, San Diego, CA 92108. Indiana-DFI Mortgage Lending License 43321. Michigan 1st Mortgage Broker/Lender/Servicer Registrant FR0022702. These materials are not from HUD or FHA and the document was not approved by HUD, FHA or any Government Agency. Subject to credit approval. For licensing information, go to: www.nmlsconsumeraccess.orgEqual
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