Retirement is a pivotal life transition that comes with both daunting challenges and exciting opportunities. In this thoughtful episode, Bruce Simmons addresses the common hurdles faced by retirees, such as unexpected depression and loss of identity. He shares key strategies to regain purpose and satisfaction in these later years through the adoption of fulfilling hobbies and activities. A large part of the episode focuses on reverse mortgages, demystifying this financial option and positioning it as a key enabler to fund retirement dreams. Whether it’s travel, community involvement, or undertaking new projects, a reverse mortgage can unlock financial flexibility. Drawing
00:00:01 Introduction and Importance of Passion in Retirement
00:27:00 Exploring Community and Social Connections
Bruce Simmons (Host) :
Hello and happy weekend. Oh, well, wait a minute. If you’re retired, does it really matter if it’s a weekend or not? I’m not retired yet, so I don’t know. But what I want to talk about on the show today is retirement. Not only retirement, but actually passion projects. What are you passionate about in retirement? your retirement. Why did you want to retire to begin with, right? But we’re going to be also digging a little deeper because we’re going to talk about using a reverse mortgage to find purpose in your retirement through funding your passion projects. That’s what we’re going to talk about on the show today. But before we get into the details of that, I do want to talk a little bit about some of the challenges people have in retirement. And some of these, I’ve done some research and I didn’t know that this was such a thing. But really, there’s a fair number of people who struggle to relax. They find it difficult to relax. Stop working mode. I don’t know. I’ve always been in working mode. I’m always in working mode. Just ask my wife. So I don’t know what that causes in your body to not be able to relax like that and the anxiety. There’s a lot of people who have anxiety because they feel anxious also, too, about having more time but less money to spend. And it’s a matter, you’ve got to budget your time and, well, not your time, but your money really more so. And that’s always kind of a challenge. But some people I found out in doing my research on this, they lose their identity. Their identity is so tied up. in work. And whether they’re an upper-level manager or a blue-collar worker or a contractor, it doesn’t matter. People lose their identity if they’re not doing what they’ve been doing for the last 40 years. It’s a challenge. You know, and then also finding meaning. Just what are you going to do with your time now, especially if you have money issues. But it can cause depression For people, a fair number of people end up going through a depression time period when they first retire. They have restlessness and difficulty adjusting to a new routine. It’s a challenge for a lot of people. I did a little bit of research on this in some of the statistics, and it’s amazing that they have here, according to a study in the Journal of Popular Aging, people who are retired are twice as likely to experience depression than those that are still working. Research from the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs suggests that the likelihood of clinical depression increases by about 40% after retirement. So I think it’s very important for people to not just to retire. You hear those statistics, and I didn’t do any research on this, but people retiring and they don’t have a purpose and they die six months or a year after retiring. Nobody wants to do that. And I think that may be more single people, too, because it’s amazing that I also looked here. They said unmarried couples are four and a half times more likely to be unhappy in retirement. So stay married. I know there’s a big deal in reverse mortgages, something called silver divorce. And we help people with silver divorce. Okay, you know, a husband and a wife get divorced. They own a home free and clear. One person wants to stay in the home. The other person needs to leave. And the person who wants to stay in the home has to buy that person out, but they don’t want to cash out all their retirement assets to do that. A reverse mortgage can help in those situations. Hopefully you’re not in that situation though. But if you are, you can still call me. By the way too, If you just tuned in, you are listening to Reverse Mortgage Radio. My name is Bruce Simmons. I’m the Reverse Mortgage Manager with American Liberty Mortgage here in Denver. You can reach me directly. I’ve got a phone number of 303-467-7821. That number is actually my own phone number that rings to an office that’s in my house and it’s forwarded to my cell phone because I don’t work from home as often as I used to back during the pandemic. But I mostly work from the office or I’m also out visiting people. I come to you if you’re anywhere along the front range pretty much or even in the foothills or sometimes the mountains or wherever. I mean, I’ve gone from like Red Feather Lakes on down to Pueblo, anywhere in between. If you if you want to meet in person, I’m good with that most time, most of the time, depending every now and again, I get super busy and I can’t take a day out to go out and to drive for three or four hours to go see you in Gunnison or someplace like that. But it’s amazing that the challenges that people have in retirement, and it saddens me because I didn’t realize that this was such a thing. Personally, I’m like six, seven, eight years away from retirement, so I’m glad that I learned this. But one thing I did learn in this is if you are able to be curious, maintain your curiosity, because in one article I was looking, they said curiosity… And the pursuit, really, of your curiosity can find purpose. So you find your purpose through your curiosity. If you’re curious about something, let’s say it’s about the blockchain, Bitcoin, all that stuff. I think that stuff’s fascinating, but I don’t have time to do that. And I remember thinking that this is something that I could really dig into and learn more about once I get retired and am able to have time. The other thing I really am passionate about, well, not passionate, gardening. I love to garden. But also, one thing that I want to do is to do more with my hands in building things. I get this Handyman magazine. They still send it to me, even though my subscription canceled about a year ago. I still get it. But it’s amazing the projects that I see. I say, oh, man, that would be so awesome. Of course, I have no talent in that realm. So it would take me… three, four, five times as long and probably about twice or three times as much money in wood and other things to do these projects, but it would be very cool to learn. I’ve wanted to build a workshop in my garage for decades, and I never have just because I’m so bad at it. I was actually a mechanic in the Army back in the 80s, but I realized I’m not very mechanically inclined, although… Another goal that I have is taking like an old 70s pickup, a Ford or a Dodge, and fixing it up. I’d love to find an old 1970 F100 that needs a bunch of work and just start from scratch on that. I think that would be amazing. Be curious about things. If you have a curiosity about anything, pursue it. Writing. It could be, you know, maybe you’ve always wanted to write a book. Write your memoirs. I have one customer that I meet with on a fairly regular basis. He’s a great guy. We used to meet for breakfast, or I’d meet him over at Clancy’s Bar in… wheat Ridge sometimes, and he’s getting older now. It’s more and more difficult for him to get out, but we meet for wine in his house too. Sometimes just have a couple of glasses of wine with him. And it’s just a great guy. He’s an awesome person, but I asked him, he’s done so much things with his life. I said, have you ever thought about writing this stuff down? And he, he hasn’t, that’s not, he’s not interested in that, but he, For some people, maybe it is, especially if you’ve got a large family. He doesn’t have a family, so it’s not important to him. But if you want to leave a legacy for your family, yeah, you could try to leave a million bucks. What’s going to be more important to your family? I tell you what’s going to be most important is your history. What have you done throughout your life that… that was unique or that was fun. How did you meet your spouse? How did you do in school? Did you go to college? How did you start your career? All of these things. What happened in the army when you were in the army? Or if your husband was in the army, or maybe you were a nurse in the army, whatever the case may be. The military thing is always interesting to me, especially back when we had more wars. Well, younger guys, I was served during the 80s. So I tell people I was in the Cold War. I was cold in Germany. It took me a lot of beer to stay warm. But either way, there’s always adventures that you’ve had that I think sharing with your family is just a fantastic way to make it real and leave a legacy for your family. So there’s a lot of things, but also, too, social connections. It’s so important for people to stay connected to their community. Even when you can’t get out as much, there’s more and more places that allow you to do Zoom meetings. I know my Kiwanis Club that meets in Wheat Ridge on Thursday mornings at 730. If you ever want a free breakfast, come to the Wheat Ridge Visitor Center on 38th, just east of Wadsworth and Wadsworth. Come to the Wheat Ridge Kiwanis Club. I’d love to see you there. And join us for breakfast one morning, and I’d love to have you. We do a ton of volunteer stuff, and we are so active in the community, and I’ve developed such good friendships with people in that club. These are things that I’m going to continue doing forever. Even if I left Denver when I retire, which is a possibility, I’ll find a Kiwanis Club somewhere else. And develop friendships that way. But there’s people who just move to the community, who come, they say, hey, I want to be part of the community. Join a service organization, whether it’s Rotary or Optimist or Lions Club, whatever the case may be. That’s a fantastic way to find your passion. But you know what? Some of these things cost money. It does cost money to join a service organization and go there and have breakfast. I say free breakfast. If you become a member, you get free breakfast if you come once or twice as a guest. We’re not going to feed you forever for free. But once you become a member, then you have to start paying dues, right? And that stuff costs money. And that’s one of the limitations to pursuing your passions. Maybe it’s personal health. If you need to find a gym somewhere to stay in shape or exercise or you’re concerned, you can’t spend too much money. Right. So you don’t travel the way you want to. That’s maybe that’s your passion is traveling and looking even just in America. There is so much stuff to see in America. I think about all the things that I’ve seen, but also all the things I haven’t seen. You know, I’ve seen the Grand Canyon and and the great sand dunes right here in Colorado and the beautiful peaks in Colorado. But I’ve never been to the Florida Keys. I’ve never been to Niagara Falls. All these places I’ve been to the south when I was in the army. And that was an interesting that was kind of a wake up call having sweet tea because I didn’t used to like iced tea. But then I remember the first time I tried sweet tea. I’m like, whoa, that’s good stuff. Of course, that was back when I had a big sweet tooth. But they’re just the different ways people live. And seeing the fall foliage, it’s beautiful in Colorado. But, man, have you ever been to Pennsylvania or New York or Massachusetts? I lived for Massachusetts for four years, and that was amazing, seeing the fall foliage out there. Beautiful, beautiful time. But those are – if you don’t have the funds, that can limit – And if you want to invest or start a business, there’s a number of people who retire and they start a business. That’s a fantastic way to fund a passion. Maybe it’s a nonprofit. You want to help people. And so you start a nonprofit to make a wish type situation or to help kids. There’s a place that I just recently volunteered for called… Sleep in Heavenly Peace, SHP, Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Check it out. They build beds for kids who don’t have beds. And they had this huge event called Build a Bed. It was a Build a Bed day, Saturday, a few Saturdays ago. And my club went and volunteered there. They had like 50 people there. From all different organizations and just people in the community who wanted to volunteer. They found out about it and showed up and helped build beds. And it was an amazing time. Their goal was to build 150 beds. But they told us that there’s still 2,000 people on the waiting list for beds for kids. And who’d have known that that was even a thing? So if you have… a passion for kids. And you don’t have to have any construction ability. Like I said, I don’t. And I was able to help. It was amazing. So all of these things can help the community, help fuel your own passion and give you a reason to be getting up early in the morning. Maybe it’s just getting up and going for a run or walking the dog or whatever the case may be. But It’s important to stay active, but you’ve got to have a passion. You say, oh yeah, it’s important to stay active. Well, let me just check the score of the game or let me just watch this soap opera or the news or whatever. There’s a lot of people that are political junkies. So they flip on CNN or Fox News, whichever you prefer, MSNBC, whatever. And they watch that all day. It’s amazing that people do that. Other people will watch the soap operas. I know my aunt used to watch soap operas and Hallmark movies all day long. My dad watched Gunsmoke and Fox News all day long. Drove my mom crazy. But that was after he wasn’t able to golf anymore and be as active as he wanted to. Anyways, what I’m getting at is there are ways to fund your passions in retirement. One of the ways, of course, is if you were able to invest and save a million dollars or two million dollars and you’ve got all this money you can travel all you want and there’s really no restrictions if you don’t happen to be in that situation but you’ve been paying your mortgage all your all these years and now you’ve either paid your home off or you’re you’re almost paid off and you you want to tap into some of that equity a reverse mortgage right Obviously, that’s what we’re here to talk about. My name is Bruce Simmons, and I’m the reverse mortgage manager for American Liberty Mortgage here in Denver. You can reach me directly if you have any questions about reverse mortgage. That’s my passion right now is reverse mortgages. 303-467-7821 is my direct line that rings right to my cell phone eventually. It goes through a landline, so don’t try to text me at that number. But You can reach me also online at ReverseMortgageRadio.net. ReverseMortgageRadio.net. Thank you for tuning in today to Reverse Mortgage Radio. We’re talking about funding your passion projects during retirement and using a reverse mortgage to do it. And basically, let me explain real quick what a reverse mortgage is for those that don’t know. It’s most often a FHA-insured loan. Now, there are non-FHA-insured loans. In fact, I’ve got a couple of those going right now. But the most popular one, probably 92%, 95% of all reverse mortgages are insured by the FHA, Federal Housing Administration. And what it does is it allows you to convert a portion of the value of your home into money that you can spend. It’s not taxed because it’s considered loan proceeds. You have to be at least 62 years old, you or your spouse, at least one of you has to be 62 years old. You have to live there as your primary residence, maintain the home, and you have to continue to pay your property taxes and your homeowner’s insurance. Now, why would you have to do that? Because it’s still your home. The reverse mortgage does not take your home or the bank does not take your home with a reverse mortgage. A lot of people, it’s amazing how many people still think the reverse mortgage owns the home. No, all it is is a loan against your home that you never actually have to repay. What happens is you get this money from the reverse mortgage and you’re still charged interest every month because it’s a loan. And you’re also charged mortgage insurance on an ongoing basis. There’s upfront costs, but then every month you’re going to see two charges on your statement. You’re going to see interest for the month, and you’re going to see mortgage insurance. The mortgage insurance goes to pay if ever you ended up owing more on the house than it’s actually worth. It also goes to guarantee that whatever money is available to you that maybe you haven’t taken yet, we’ll talk about that in just a minute, is still available to you no matter what. If the lender goes out of business, if the lender gets hit by a tornado and their headquarters is destroyed, FHA will step in and continue to make that money available to you. Because there’s different ways you can get money from a reverse mortgage. You could take a lump sum, a huge lump sum. Now, there’s restrictions. You can only take a certain amount in the first year. You can also… receive a monthly payment. Now that’s what a lot of people think of when the reverse mortgage. They say it’s where the bank pays you instead of you paying the bank. And that’s one way that you can get the funds. The other way is with a line of credit. And that’s nice because it works as a HELOC, a home equity line of credit type situation. It’s not a HELOC, but it’s a reverse mortgage line of credit. You are not charged interest until you take the money out. There’s some more and more confusion, it seems, on that. People say, okay, well, I’ve got $300,000 available from the reverse mortgage, but I only need $100,000 right now. Am I paying interest on all $300,000? No. And technically, you’re not paying interest at all. You’re being charged interest because no payment is due on the reverse mortgage. You just have to pay your taxes and insurance and maintain the home, live there as your primary residence, and keep your name on title. As long as you do those things, you can never, ever, ever be kicked out of the home. But you’ve got this extra $200,000 available. That’s guaranteed by FHA. They can never, you can never lose that. And in fact, any money you’ve got set aside in a line of credit actually increases over time if you don’t use it. It’s an amazing program. Go back on, you can go to my website at reversemortgageradio.net And I don’t remember when I last talked about the benefits, but I remember I did a whole show on just the line of credit and all the benefits of the reverse mortgage line of credit. Go to reversemortgageradio.net and you can go to listen to all my radio shows dating back to like 2017. I’ve been doing this for, what’s that, like seven years now. It’s amazing how long I’ve been doing it. But I do it because people are interested in this program. They like learning without any pressure of buying or being sold something. And that’s the curiosity thing again, right? Keep that curiosity going in retirement. There are a lot of different ways that you can use a reverse mortgage to fund your passion. I mean, a lot of people give gifts. Imagine instead of giving a $5 gift card to your grandkids, you can give $100 for Christmas to your grandkids or get them. Imagine helping to pay college. for your grandkids or help your own kids with a down payment on a house. Loan them $10,000 or actually gift them $10,000 or $20,000 towards a down payment on a house. That’s an amazing way to what they call give with a warm hand instead of a cold hand. Yeah, you might have less equity when you pass away to leave to your family, but look at what you’re able to enjoy them doing. Using that money now, that’s a passion for people. Helping other people. Traveling. Of course, obviously, if you have a line of credit with a reverse mortgage and you want to travel, take a trip to Italy for three weeks, imagine that. Or whatever your dream vacation is. Imagine, like, I’m half Polish and I’ve never thought about going to Poland. I mean, why would you go to Poland, right? Well, I think the more I’ve learned about it, they are an amazing people. It’s amazing what they were able to do through all the The tyranny and the despotism and stuff that Hitler had taken over. But not only that, well before that, in the late 1700s, basically Poland was divided in three between Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany or something like that. I don’t remember. But they see Poland. There was no Poland until after World War I. I mean, there was Poland before that, and then Poland went away. I mean, all the history there, I just think it’s amazing. And there’s so much stuff that I want to learn about it. And I think going there would be a fantastic trip, more about discovering my roots. And if you’ve got roots anywhere in the world, imagine if you could go and study that. And genealogy, that’s a passion for a lot of people. I know my processor is very passionate about that. And she’ll take trips. to, you know, to other states in the United States to find a long lost cousin that she never, never knew she had. And she reached out to that person like, oh, yeah, wow, that’s amazing. You’re so-and-so’s kid who was married to ex whoever, you know, it’s I think it’s pretty amazing learning about all that stuff, too. But it’s not my passion. I just think it’s interesting. But maybe you’re a marathon runner. It’s funny because I did a lone marathon. for a guy in Boulder. This guy was almost 80 years old, I remember. And he had pictures of himself, recent, within the last few years, running like ice marathons, marathons in the winter. I mean, when he was in his mid-70s, he was doing this stuff. And he swam every day, so he had to pay for a membership to a pool. all these things and the reverse mortgage helped him travel to these events where he would run half marathons or marathons or 10Ks, whatever. And there was this whole niche community that he was part of, that he knew people from all around the country and even in different parts of the world because he was able to go to these events and meet people with the same passion. I mean, it doesn’t matter what your passion is. If it’s guns or stamps or coins, whatever. You just like collecting things and going to those communities. And it could be motorcycles or muscle cars, whatever, car shows. A lot of people are really into their classic cars. Fun stuff. One of the things my Kiwanis Club did is we served food at a British car festival in Arvada just recently, too. So another customer of mine was a retired contractor. Now think about it. I get, you know, there’s… There’s no such thing as a retired contractor. You’re always doing something, right? You’ve got family that wants help with this or that or the other thing. But I remember in late 2008 or 2009, maybe 2009, 2010 timeframe, I did a loan for him. He lived in Golden. And fantastic guy. But his goal, he saw the huge potential in buying foreclosed condos and fixing them up and selling them. And he used the line of credit so that he could… buy these things basically for cash. He was buying them for $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, fixing them up and selling them for $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 or whatever the case may be. I don’t remember the values at that time. And he would turn around and sell them and then he would take the money and pay back the line of credit. And then he’d have that money available. He’d keep some of the profit or travel with it or whatever he did with it. But he did that. I didn’t stay in touch with him, unfortunately. So I don’t know how everything went exactly. But I know that was his plan to do something like that. Also, too… One of the very first reverse mortgages I did was for a couple that liked to RV. They would take their RV all around the country, and they needed to, what they said, they said to me, quote, unquote, upgrade their fleet. They had a truck and they needed a new one to tow their, it wasn’t an RV, I guess it was a fifth wheel. But they needed a new truck to do that with and they were able to do that with a reverse mortgage. So they bought this new vehicle to tow their fifth wheel. And eventually they ended up, I think, getting a newer fifth wheel too. They sold their old one and used part of the proceeds they still had remaining in their line of credit. to purchase a new fifth wheel. And it just was the difference for them. Again, they got to know people. They’d go to… There’s a place down in… It’s in Arizona, northwest Arizona, south of Las Vegas. And they would go there and hang out for a few months or… They would go up to the northeast sometimes to all over. My own in-laws did that. They bought an RV and they traveled around for a while doing that. Now, they didn’t get a reverse mortgage to do it, but they were able to do that. One time, I’ll never forget this. I did a loan for a customer back early in my career in like 2004 or 2005, and he was stationed in a village outside of Paris in France after World War II, like in the late 40s. And he had like a gathering with half a dozen guys from his platoon. They went back to that village and were able to rent a house and stay there with their wives for a couple of weeks. And he said that was just the trip of a lifetime, sharing that with their spouses and being able to relive those experiences because it was after the war. Things were… were much better. They weren’t in the war itself, but they had a great time while they were there. And it’s just enriching your life. And that was a very good benefit for him and his family. So there’s a lot of different ways that a reverse mortgage can help you in retirement to to fund your passion. And no matter what your passion is, it could be anything like we talked about. But if you’re holding back from living your passion during your retirement, give me a call, please. You can reach me directly at 303-467-7821. My name is Bruce Simmons. I’m the reverse mortgage manager with American Liberty Mortgage. If this is the first time you’ve heard about reverse mortgages and you’re like, Hey, I got to do some research on this before I call this sucker here on the radio. Go to my website. Download my consumer guide. It’s my reverse mortgage consumer guide on my website. It’s free. Do that. You can also get a free quote in the upper right-hand corner. Click get a free quote. And you can go in there and look and see right then and there how much you might be able to get from a reverse mortgage. I don’t gather all kinds of personal information or any of that stuff. But I would be happy to talk to you in person or go to my website and visit me there at reversemortgageradio.net. Thanks so much, and I hope you have a fantastic weekend.
