Mortgage Crisis: Seniors Losing Their Golden Years

usatoday.com:

The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has slashed home values and triggered an unprecedented surge in foreclosures across the nation. It's also taking an especially harsh toll on an often overlooked demographic: seniors who are retired or nearly so.

Conventional wisdom holds that most seniors have paid off their mortgages or have significant equity in their homes, but in reality hundreds of thousands are suffering in the housing crisis.

Read the whole story: usatoday.com

Comments

[dansup]

sure hope the "kids" of two people in this story are helping, since they took from their parents and helped get them into this mess......­.....

[Konnie]

here's an idea: coordinate the names and addresses of all the people (say over 55) who were listed as participants
in every pension fund, every insurance annuity, every 401k. et al. from a-z and from lowest dollar amount
to highest dollar amount invested. (i am sure the irs already has this information)

then when the tarp money starts coming back into the treasury., starting at the bottom of the list
refund every dollar lost to that individual investor. and then move up the list, and up the list and
up the list. if they run a little short near the multi-million dollar portfolios, well that's ok. those folks
lived large at the watering hole for a long time.

re-set the investments of the people who were counting on the money for food, and medicine.
and will have no opportunity to catch up when the markets do turn around (won't happen in our
lifetimes but some of the youngins might live that long)
don't care so much about the folks who were going to use it to fund their second home.

[JoeBlough]

That's socialism.

[ProfessorDuh]

Forget whatever blather the politicians and the business community puts out. Just watch where all the money goes.
In what kind of insane "free market" do companies reward the executives who wrecked them with hundreds of millions in bonuses, even as they get massive taxpayer handouts?
We don't have capitalism, and we don't have socialism. We have something far worse than both -- an economy and a government run by and for the corporate ruling class, and exclusively for their benefit.

[americaforme]

I do believe you haven't a clue yet to the losses, I see, know mention of the credit card debacle, or the rip off to seniors, that were trying to keep up with the Jones. These are very simple dynamics and are glossed over like they aren't responsible for seniors golden agony years. When the oil bills came, the credit cards came out. For the last three years, seniors were scraping it all together, to keep the wolf off the door. Even if you dont have a mortgage, the copay for pills, doctors, energy, cars, keep you broke, whiped out, zilch territory. I am thankfull that you posted this article, its like everyone has put seniors on the back burner.

[ProfessorDuh]

The Republicans have a message for you seniors: tough cookies. And if you voted for their policies of deregulated ruthless fraud, I agree with them.

[JoeBlough]

Will we have to bail-out the seniors for bad planning? It's not that hard to stay with just the essentials.

[Konnie]

hey joe! we planned, bub~!

don't blame those of us who did all the right things like work our asses off for 40 years,
socked away every penny we could, put our kids thru college, paid our bills and then
watched as some greedy s.o.bs. did an end run to grab as much as they could for
themselves causing everything to collapse.

and what do you consider essentials? living in doors? heat in the winter?
eating more than dog food? you selfish little twit!

can't wait to see whart karma has in mind for you!

[Montanagramma]

Absolutely Agree! Some folks think they are SO smart, that nothing will ever happen to their futures. "They got another think coming!!"

[PhilipTaylor]

I believe that the Elite Corporatists saw the coming Baby Boomers retirement as too costly to them so they simply K1LLED IT!

They tried to get their squarmy hands on Social Security and when that FAILED they simply took our wealth!

[quindy]

Why are old people having mortgages? Why are banks giving old people loans? At 77 his house should have been paid off. Let's hope that people learn from this crisis and start saving.

[PhilipTaylor]

Because REAL incomes for NON-ELITES have dropped 20% over the last 30 Years. So the Elderly are hurt badly!

While the Elites have increased over 300%!

[quindy]

I understand that. I am not the elite. But I would rather go hungry than take loan at my age.

[RRoadrunner]

WOW this story hits home really hard. With retirement savings getting wacked by Wall Street and the value of homes in a downward spiral those of us in the 50+ age group have lost “real wealth” and not “paper wealth”. Our window of opportunity to recoup our losses is short and treacherous. If there is one lesson to be learned is that this could happen to YOU. No matter how diligent or responsible you might be, it takes only one experience beyond your control and POOF, YOU’RE in trouble. I totally agree with delileftovers, the self righteous crapola needs to be tempered.

[dnpvd51]

Whatever,

The government attempt to fix this problem by bailing out everyone hurts seniors.

Seniors are on fixed incomes. When Obama takes actions that weaken the dollar he screws over everyone on a fixed income.

And Obama is basically telling savers and those on fixed incomes to go to hell.

[RRoadrunner]

..Obama is basically telling savers and those on fixed incomes to go to hell.

No, Congress is the culprit. We are now reaping the fruits of their behavior.

[IbeHappy]

You don't have a clue.

Weaken the dollar? Wall Street greed and the past administrations policy of allowing it to prosper and the artificial bubble of the Bush economy together with a war paid for by foreign loans busted the dollar.

[Housewife]

Your comment is ridiculous in the extreme.

[JoeBlough]

Take solice that when you've reached the end of your road, you will be in a better place. (That's what the Rev says).

[AgathaX]

Unless you take away peoples right to make decisions, you can't keep people from making bad decisions. Fortunately, most of these people do have a reliable income--albeit insufficient to meet the obligations they have incurred. With appropriate guidance all could find sustainable situations. But of course, if they had had appropriate guidance they might not have gotten themselves into these positions to begin with.

[Housewife]

You don't know what you are talking about. I watched my 83 year old mother's savings cut in half in a matter of weeks. She was always conservative, earned her pension and social security, played by the rules and never took unneccesary risks. She needed that money invested in funds that would pay her a decent income because government guaranteed accounts don't pay nearly enough. When you talk about sustainable situations I can't believe you have taken into consideration the extra care needs of the elderly.

[dnpvd51]

If the government would protect the value of the dollar, seniors could just keep their savings in a savings account and not have to worry about market losses.

The way the government keeps changing the rules and printing dollars, you need to be a financial genius to protect savings.

[DeliLeftOvers]

The self righteous crapola I'm seeing here is sickening. There is a large number of Americans who over the past forty years worked hard every day for a wage that allowed them to pay their bills and a mortgage on a small house, maybe buy a new car every six to ten years, hoped to stay healthy and if they were lucky were able to help educate their children. However, they COULD NOT save money because they earnings they had were insufficient to do so. Not everyone out there has a television in every room and a phone there also and three cars, all of which are less than two years old. Not everyone had health insurance which met the expenses of unexpected health issues and was affordable. There was nothing wrong with these people, they are the ones who made it possible for a large number of other people to be able to live well enough to look down their noses at them.

And this doesn't even discuss the change in the American concept of who has value and the ability to maintain a decent job until retirement. Older workers are productive, but they are perceived as "costing more" and if they believe in producing a quality product they are "slowing down production".

[trimom]

Ignore these folks. They obviously do not understand the work or savings ethics of their seniors. My parents are in their seventies, worked hard for fifty years, raised five kids and go to church every week - sometimes more.

They have seen their savings disappear by half. The anxiety that this has caused them is overwhelming.

There is something terribly wrong with a society that ridicules their elders.

[HerCabinBoy]

This is a society that exists in a world that is now aware that time and resources are finite and becoming more so. Your parents never internalized that, and if they have recently, it's too late for them to do anything about it.
I'm 31. We youth know the time is now. If you want to make it big the ethical way, you have to attain the terminal degree in your field. You have to grab the stars and make them yours. You may have to do that several times. You can never be satisfied and you must keep yourself evolving faster than the world does. If you are 30 years old today, you should be a generally superior person than someone who is 70 or older today.
Your parents worked hard, raised 5 kids, and went to church on a regular basis. The way the world has changed on them is not fair, but they are not blameless. They made their choices, and chances are they met plenty of peers during their lives who made more favorable choices for the current environment. I do take issue with your statement about work ethic because where we're heading is a place of endless lifetime competition, not backward where you can get a bachelor's, work 40 years, and retire with a pension.

[KillTheMessenger]

See... THAT is why you are not supposed to speculate with your home. I hope we learned a lesson here.

[rkimball]

downsize..­.downsize.­..downsize­. i have. it didn't hurt one bit. i am now debt free. it's a good thing i wasn't basing my entire retirement solely on my investments like many seniors have.

[DeliLeftOvers]

Tell that to the people in areas where selling their house will result in a loss, no matter what. There are places in America where house prices have dropped so much that an original owner ten year old house with no second mortgage cannot sell for what is owed on it from the original first mortgage, if the owner is lucky enough to be able to sell it.

And I bet that most of you don't realize that if you have a short sale (the bank takes less than what's owed when you sell your home) that you are then taxed on the differrence between what was owed and the selling price, becuase the government doesn't look upon it as a free gift.

[JoeBlough]

Before you can retire, you have to save up enough money. Looks like a lot of people aren't playing by the rules.

[Housewife]

You don't know what you are talking about. People who have played by the rules are being destroyed by lost equity in their homes and crippling health care costs. You will realize that when you sustain a catastrophic illness which results in the loss of your job, your inability to sell the house you own that's value is underwater and the loss of your health insurance because they write the fine print. Good luck with those rules.

[dnpvd51]

Obama's stupid attempt to keep housing prices too high is even worse for seniors.

Many Seniors are on fixed incomes. All this money that the government is creating out of thin air to save housing crushes the value of the dollar and hurts everyone that lives on a fixed income.

Also if these seniors bought these houses over ten years ago I do not see how they could be hurting. They must have been pulling money out of the house right and left.

[RETIREDAT50]

I would move the heck out of Florida, My wife retired at age 53 five years ago, I just retired at age 50 this past February, our five year old home has been paid off for two years, and so are our vehicles. We pull in $5000.00 per month with our pensions, and our rentals pull in $2,100.00 per month. We saved $800.00 last year when our assessor lowered our property taxes, due to the across the board home devaluations, and it should drop more in 2009!!! life is great!!!!!!!!