Nancy Paine
Well, I didn’t know anything about a HECM.
What I learned is that we had choices. We could continue to make our mortgage payment and reduce the loan. We could choose to do nothing. We could let the payment pile up for a while and make a big lump sum payment sometime before the end of the year for tax purposes, or we could just build up a line of credit.
And the line of credit was so much easier to access than trying to get a loan on equity in your home if you needed it. It, I mean, it’s just there.
It allowed us to pay for other things. We could pay off bills. We bought a new car.
We took a long vacation. It was kind of a dream vacation for us that we had planned on traveling in our retirement. And it [the reverse mortgage loan] made it more affordable.
I would tell anyone who is planning retirement that they should look at it because it frees up cash. And if you can free up your cash and invest it someplace else, I think that’s the wise thing to do, because, at my age, as we get older, we have different kinds of expenses.
Whether I needed short-term care in a facility or whether I needed to hire nursing assistance in my home, I would not want to wait until that time. I would want to be prepared for it, and I would want to have the cash ready and not necessarily dip into my retirement [savings] to do that.
Fairway was very fair. They’ve always given us a good rate on our home. They’ve always been very forthcoming about what we are eligible for and what we would have to do in order to get the best possible financial scenario.
The whole process was really very easy.
You know, there’s a lot out there that frightens you and gives you information that is not always accurate.
Fairway were very responsive, and they cleared up all of those doubts and fears that one might have by making a change like this into something that’s worked out really, really well.
