Gene Cohen, M.D., Ph.D., has developed a 12-point questionnaire to help people determine their Retirement Readiness Quotient. You may wish to share it with your reverse mortgage prospects. This tool could also be part of a presentation…
Continue readingLife can seem like one long stepping stone towards graduation: Fortunately, for elders who want to remain in their own homes as long as possible another kind of graduation exists, thanks to the reverse mortgage. It’s a rite of passage that is often overlooked; the decision to age in place….
Continue readingMental and emotional health is as important as physical well being for seniors.
Continue readingIs a reverse mortgage in fact the last safe haven for future retirees? If so why are we not seeing record production? A look at the current state of soon to be retirees, home values and more.
Continue readingThere’s a humorous country song about a man who leaves his wife in their mature years, and how, in response, “she let herself go”
Continue readingIf you bet your life that’s a big wager. This is exactly what many retirees are doing today by delaying Social Security payments or getting a reverse mortgage. It comes down to…
Continue readingDon’t burn bridges. The HECM is a bridge over the troubled waters of retirement. What must we do to insure it remains a reachable option for future retirees?
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Workplace expert Lynn Taylor, who coined the term “Gen U” for Generation Unretired, believes today’s seniors and soon-to-be seniors represent a sea change for both business and the reverse mortgage industry. She says, “With the growing number of people seeking greater financial security to address longer life spans, Gen U will be highly receptive to financial incentives such as reverse mortgage, which will allow them to continue to thrive.”
The author of the workplace conflict resolution book, Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant (TOT): How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job notes that Gen U will make up almost all the growth of the U.S. labor market over the next seven years. According to AARP, eight out of 10 of the 80 million Baby Boomers will work part- or full-time rather than retire.
“Gen U’s contributions reside not only in their skills sets garnered over many years, which can be passed onto Gen X, Gen Y, and Baby Boomers. They’ve also learned a thing or two about people skills -something often lost in today’s frenzied, high-tech workplace,” observes Taylor, who has watched this evolution from within corporate America and as a consultant over the past three decades.
Henry Alford, author of How to Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People, concurs with her assessment. “In general, the more technological a culture, the less the wisdom of elders is valued; in a world in which megabytes and artificial intelligence are the coin of the realm, skills like passing on traditions and providing cultural context are perceived to have diminished worth.”
But Taylor believes we err if we cast off the older generation.
“Because Gen U has the maturity of experience, they are often more adept at ‘humanizing the workplace.’ They’ve seen sandbox politics come and go and have witnessed that nice guys really don’t finish last. They are often the ‘anti-TOT’. That’s not to say that all of them make great bosses. But they can be a major asset to a more interpersonal, motivational workforce.”
This is also why a reverse mortgage may be key to helping Gen U workers thrive: remaining in the workforce, or reinventing themselves for an entirely new encore career, “presents an opportunity to re-apply their knowledge, pay off expenses, ‘give back,’ and feel a renewed sense of purpose,” says Taylor. While a sense of community can be created in a yoga class or golf game, for many mature workers, building something that directly impacts the livelihoods of others can be even more rewarding, she notes.
“This Gen-U-ine shift will become a win-win-win for companies, the reverse mortgage industry, and the unretired in the months and years ahead.”
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal cites concern over the 4% Rule. Traditional withdrawal strategies may no longer work for most in today’s market. Reverse Mortgages are mentioned as part of the solution.
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When people talk about “having a senior moment” it’s decidedly unfunny — especially if you’re the one who went to the basement and now can’t recall why. But the surprisingly good news? Our brains are more fertile and resilient than once believed — in fact, they actually peak in performance sometime in midlife, which most researchers define as anywhere from ages 40 to 68.
In The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain, New York Times health and medical science editor Barbara Strauch writes, “Middle age is a far more important time for our brains than anyone ever suspected. This is when paths diverge. What we do when we’re on Planet Middle Age determines what the next stop, Planet Old Age, will look like. At midlife, the brain is ‘on the cusp’. What we do matters, and even what we think matters.”
What does this mean for the “reverse mortgage-age” brain? While your prospects may have more trouble with name retrieval, and their brains may not perform at the same rate of speed they did when in their twenties, the brains’ owners are collectively happier, more adaptable to stress, and actually power up, not down, to solve problems.
This is especially handy in a crisis: remember 57-year-old pilot Chesley Sullenberger III, who made a successful emergency landing of a disabled jet on the Hudson River? Sullenberger was able to call up established patterns and connections built up in his brain over the decades. One reason everyone survived, reported an air safety investigation, was the middle-aged pilot and crew: “a testament to experience.”
We live in “a strangely schizophrenic world in terms of age,” confirms Strauch. “We tell people to get out of the way at 62, yet we’ve had a man running for U.S. president, arguably the toughest job around, at age 72. We send clear messages to women, in particular, that they’re past their prime in dozens of ways by their late fifties, and yet we have had a grandmother, at age 68, running the U.S. House of Representatives.”
So when your reverse mortgage clients and prospects can’t recall a name, or are a bit slower to grasp new information, remember that this is a brain more focused on the positive than its younger counterparts, more integrated in terms of its experience, judgment, and yes, wisdom, and blessed with “cognitive reserve,” explains Strauch.
Cognitive reserve means that the more we feed our brains with education and mental enrichment, from reading to concerts to Chinese lessons (as well as nutrition and exercise), the more we build brainpower throughout the lifespan — even to the extent that a cognitively enriched brain is more protected against dementia, reveals Strauch.
And a robust, age-reversed brain can also exhibit greater interest in a reverse mortgage than one that’s in decline.
