Posts Tagged ‘Mortgages’

What Do You Know About Reverse Mortgages?

May 18th, 2010

It’s time we made our last move – to the retirement home
It’s not that we’re old and feeble, we’re just old. Old is a matter of the mind, the years don’t count. If you feel old, you are old, simple. If one is healthy and mobile you are not really that old, at least not com pared to the much younger people we see being wheeled around in the shopping malls by their care-givers. You see us in the shopping malls too, but we’re running from shop to shop, chasing their special offers. Having said all that, I still find myself reading the retirement home ads in the newspapers…

Our lives
Our day-to-day lives are great. I go to the gym across the road a couple of times a week, but just to use the treadmill. My wife too, attends an exercise class. She plays bridge a few times a week and I attend a painting class at the local art school and do a bit of painting at home. We both drive the car and we still travel whenever we get the chance. I am still attached to an engineering office but most of the work I get is by email and my trips to the office are few and far between. My wife cooks and so do I on occasion. The children and grandchildren are invited for family dinners and we cope with all that.

The retirement homes
There seem to be many different kinds. Some have frail care and others don’t. Some are rental units and others are for purchase. I haven’t bothered to find out the terms and conditions, but from what I read in the ads, they all have one thing in common – they are very expensive. I certainly don’t have that kind of money at this stage of my life. Besides the purchase price there is the monthly maintenance charge, also very expensive, way beyond me.

The reverse mortgage
Some mortgage banks, aware of the situation that the elderly among us find themselves, (and looking to profit from this situation) are offering reverse mortgages. If you own an apartment, or possibly even own most of the apartment, you may qualify for a reverse mortgage, meaning that you can borrow money against your apartment to buy a unit in the retirement home. This opens a whole slew of possibilities for the elderly who cannot afford to buy into the retirement home.

The viatical option
There is another option for the elderly who wish to raise money to enter a retirement home – viaticals. A viatical insurance settlement is an agreement in which a third party buys a life insurance policy from an insured person and thus becomes the legal beneficiary of the policy. The insured person receives an immediate cash payout and in most cases the buyer of the policy agrees to continue to pay the premium on the life insurance policy until the death of the insured.

Tags: Mortgages, Retirement Homes, Reverse Mortgages, Viatical Option
Posted in Finance | No Comments »

Housing is back; I need a Payday Loan to get started

February 7th, 2010

I’ve seen our dream cottage

That gorgeous little cottage at the end of Maple Street is on the market and Marcie and I are determined to buy it. All I need to get started on this complicated operation is a payday loan to get me through the first few weeks of heavy expenses.

Fairytale cottage

That cottage comes straight out of a fairytale book. It’s white, it’s neat and it has a colorful garden with a bright green lawn and a white picket fence. The windows have those small panes and the frames are painted a lilac color. There is a chimney on the roof; I wonder if the fireplace works? I’ll find out next winter when we’re living there.

We dreamed the cottage dream

From the day we married, Marcie and I have talked about ‘our cottage’. How it will look, what it will have inside, what color we’ll paint the baby’s room, the pictures we’ll hang, the furniture…. We saved wherever we could, giving up on goodies and pleasures and keeping the money in our special ‘cottage account’. We stopped going to the movies and we gave up the steakhouse. Our cottage fund grew by leaps and bounds. I took the night job at the motel reception desk and Marcie worked extra shifts at the hospital. Soon the cottage was in sight.

I took a Payday Loan

We finally saw the cottage we wanted. It wasn’t exactly the one in our dream, but close. I took a payday loan and we hired an engineer to inspect the property before we made an offer. His report was bad; the ground was clay, the foundations were poor and the house had two cracks that you could put your fingers into. We ran for our lives.

The market collapses

Before we got our breaths back the subprime mortgage scandal hit and we decided to sit tight with our money. I repaid the Payday Loan and we kept adding to our cottage fund. We also started going to the movies again. Things got worse. I lost the night clerk job and nearly lost my day job as well. Marcie was safe in the hospital and the cottage receded into the mist.

Awakening time

Things are changing slowly but surely and there are signs that confidence is returning. The last few weeks has seen a revival of interest in the housing market and sales are taking place. We pricked up our ears and started driving around the suburbs.

There’s our cottage!

It was Marcie that saw it. She came running into the house at high speed, yelling “Mike! I saw our cottage! Come look!”  We shot down there and one look confirmed that she was right.

We need a Payday Loan tomorrow

Tomorrow I will call the engineer to go and look. I will take another Payday Loan for his fees. We are determined to be in that cottage by the end of next month.

Tags: Cottage, Engineer, Mortgages, Payday Loan, Property market
Posted in Finance, Loans | No Comments »

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