Busting Three Half-Truths About Reverse Mortgages

By Jamie Hopkins on June 24, 2019

Hear from Jamie Hopkins in this Forbes article regarding the public’s opinion on reverse mortgages: “A few years back, I conducted and published research in the Journal of Financial Planning that showed Americans don’t understand reverse mortgages. In fact, respondents scored below 50 percent on a 10-question true-false quiz.

One possible explanation for the poor performance is a lot of misinformation floating about. A recent USA Today article titled “Considering reverse mortgages? Better to reverse course on this risky course” confirms my belief. The article contains many half-truths and misunderstandings and projects a negative connotation of reverse mortgages onto the reader.””

Why The Announcement Of The Academy Of Home Equity Is Such An Important Development

By Jamie Hopkins, Esq., LLM, MBA, CFP®, RICP® on June 20, 2019

When it comes to retirement planning, discussions about downsizing, refinancing, making renovations to the home to support aging and reverse mortgages are ignored in most financials plans. This void is shocking since home equity is typically the largest asset that most Americans have as they near and enter retirement.

This gap in planning is why a new development at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana is so important. A group of researchers, thought leaders, planners, and industry experts, formerly of the Funding Longevity Task Force, have just joined Dr. Craig Lemoine at the University of Illinois Financial Planning Program. In the past, the group consisted of independent researchers, including myself, which is important to note as I discuss the new organization. The team formerly tested retirement income strategies and the role of home equity in financial plans. While much of the group’s research then focused on reverse mortgages, the academy is committed to investigate a broader study of home equity and retirement security.

For full article, click here.

Picture of Jaime P. Hopkins
Jaime P. Hopkins, ESQ., MBA, CFP®, LLM, CLU®, ChFC®, RICP®

Jamie Hopkins, Esq., LLM, MBA, CFP®, RICP®, is the Director of Retirement Research at Carson Wealth and a former professor of Taxation at The American College, where he helped co-create the Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®) education program. Jamie strives to increase the retirement income security of Americans by delivering practical and trusted retirement research and education. His most recent book, “Rewirement: Rewiring The Way You Think About Retirement,” details the behavioral finance issues that hold people back from a more financially secure retirement. He has been selected by InvestmentNews as one of the top 40 financial service professionals under the age of 40 and was also selected by The American Bar Association as one of the top 40 Young Attorneys in the country. In 2017, Trusts & Estates Journal awarded Professor Hopkins the Distinguished Author Award for his article on the Department of Labor Fiduciary Rule. He holds his LLM in Taxation from Temple University School of Law and his J.D. from Villanova University School of Law.

The Academy of Home Equity in Financial Planning focuses on smart use of housing wealth

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by Jessica Guerin on May 16, 2019

As defined benefit plans and pensions become a thing of the past, researchers continue to extoll home equity’s critical role in retirement income planning.

For some time, a group of academics and financial planning professionals have sought to spread that message, forming the Funding Longevity Task Force to drive this mission and working in partnership with the American College of Financial Services.

Now, that task force has a new name and a new academic institution to back it. Full article may be found here