retirement Archives - Jerry Golden on Retirement

This HECM-QLAC Power Move Can Unlock Guaranteed Retirement Income

December 8, 2025 By Jerry Golden in Annuity Tags: HECM, Home equity, QLAC, retirement

With nearly 20% of people age 65 and older facing Medicaid cuts, limited access to long-term care coverage and predictions of a major market correction, this population needs help not from the government or their advisers, but from their largest financial asset — their home.

For the past year, I’ve been investigating home equity conversion mortgages (HECMs), because a HECM offers elements that can help retirees stay in their homes and generate income for modest budgeted amounts.

In addition, the federal government provides insurance protection for HECMs so that heirs will not owe money after the original owner’s passing.

How History can Help with Your Retirement Plan Decisions

September 24, 2025 By Jerry Golden in Annuity Tags: HECM, interest rates, Jerry Golden, QLAC, retirement

In my articles about how to build a better retirement plan, I often point out that homeowners who include home equity as an asset in their retirement plan can meet more of their retirement objectives.

The number of retirees who take advantage of a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage or HECM, however, has never equaled retirement experts’ expectations. It’s not the design or pricing of the product, but rather, in my view, the limitations on how performance of HECM is presented, and the challenges of integrating HECM as part of a broader retirement plan.

Factoring Inflation Into Your Retirement Plan

December 3, 2021 By Jerry Golden in Income Allocation Tags: budget, income, income plan, Inflation, retirement, Retirement Planning

Right now, inflation is top of mind for everyone, including retirees.

Inflation is important. But it is only one of the risks that retirees have to plan for and manage. And like the other risks you have to manage, you can build an income plan so that rising costs (both actual and feared) do not ruin your retirement.

Inflation and Your Budget

Remember that in retirement your budget is different than when you were working, so you will be impacted in different ways. And, of course, when you were working your salary and bonuses might have gone up with inflation, which helped offset long-term cost increases.

Don’t bet your retirement on Monte Carlo models

October 21, 2019 By Jerry Golden in Income Allocation Tags: Income annuities, Monte Carlo model, retirement

When you sit down with a traditional financial advisor to plan your retirement you will provide her with the spending budget you have in mind. The advisor will adjust that amount for inflation and after running through a “black box” model, will predict how many years your retirement savings – typically made up of cash, stocks and bonds — will last.

The model to make this prediction is called “stochastic” — a fancy way to describe what is a typical Monte Carlo simulation model.

Income Power video shows how to enjoy your retirement without stress

September 13, 2017 By Jerry Golden in Income Power Tags: Annuities, Income power, Kiplinger, Learning about Income Power, retirement

Income Power is a simple concept. It allows you to calculate exactly how much income you can produce from the retirement savings you have.

To answer your questions, I created a video that tells the true story of Tom and Janet. They built a nice nest-egg but, until they learned of Income Power, they couldn’t determine how much money they would be able to spend as they moved into retirement. More