Growth without diversification, technological improvement, and increased productivity is easily reversed: all it takes is a dip in commodity prices.
In surveys, many borrowers say reverse mortgages have improved their lives and provided money they needed for retirement.
Because reverse mortgages do not require borrowers to make immediate repayments, the interest charges are added to the debt every day, and the total amount owed grows over time.
As the United States has become an older nation, reverse mortgages have grown into a $20-billion-a-year industry, with elderly homeowners taking out more than 132,000 such loans in 2007, an increase of more than 270 percent from two years earlier.
Lawsuits against reverse mortgage companies, including the nation's largest, Financial Freedom Senior Funding, contend that those firms helped pressure older Americans into bad investments.
Because the fees associated with a reverse mortgage are high, such loans make sense only for borrowers who expect to live in their home for a number of years.
Some financial advisers say anyone who may move in less than seven years should not take out a reverse mortgage.
It is almost always a bad idea to use a reverse mortgage to pay for a vacation or to buy a risky investment, like stocks or deferred annuities.
Cash from a reverse mortgage can be paid out in several ways, including a lump sum, a monthly payment, a line of credit, or a combination of those. If you do not need money right away, it is usually a bad idea to take all the money upfront, since it starts accumulating interest charges immediately.
If notwithstanding, a Rebellion of the same Kind now afflicts this Country, we should not infer that this Institution is useless, or should be laid aside; but just the Reverse.
