This is pretty much what my mother said to me all those years ago when she decided that a reverse mortgage was the only way that she and my father could stay in their house and continue to live the lifestyle that they had been accustomed to.
My father had literally worked his entire life, and then in his 70s and still working as New York City medallion cab driver, the 16-hour days were starting to get a bit too difficult for him to maneuver.
My mother’s heart was in the right place when she decided to go the reverse mortgage route; she wanted to cut down on my father’s working yet keep their house and lifestyle intact.
There was one problem, one possible fly in the ointment here: they had a “tenant” in their house who lived upstairs in what became a legal, two-family home, and the “tenant” was my wife, my son and myself.
My mom figured that employing a reverse mortgage on the house would not only allow her and my father to live out their lives comfortably, but keep us as tenants as they aged gracefully.
They originally built up the house from a one-story to two stories to accommodate my then family—my then wife, my then infant daughter and myself—because we had been in several apartment rental situations during our couple of years of marriage, and they simply did not turn out well for us.
In fact, the last place the three of us lived was run by an acknowledged “slum landlord” who was being investigated by Nassau County for running not only the place we lived in as an illegal two-family dwelling, but also for running at least two other places as such.
My parents saw the situation that we were in and graciously did all the leg work to initiate the long path that they needed to take to add an extra apartment to their home, and to do it legally.
As they were doing this, my marriage was breaking up, and within a few months, my then wife had moved out, taking our daughter with her.
That part of this story is one for another time, but over a period of time, I was able to pick myself up and move on, as we divorced, shared joint custody of our daughter, and I continued to live in the upstairs apartment, eventually meeting and marrying the girl of my dreams and later, having my second child, my son.
But going back to what I originally said, the arrangement was working out fine … until my mother broke the news to me that they were going to pursue the reverse mortgage route.
I read up on reverse mortgages as my parents attended one seminar after another about this potential situation that they were looking into.
My mother, who handled the finances between my father and her, said she completely understood what having a reverse mortgage meant, and they finally decided that this was the only way to go, the only way that they could keep their home and their lifestyle intact but again, the fly in the ointment was my family—I had to legally sign off on this too, and that is where the answer to the question I had about my family’s future came up, and that answer at the top of this entry was my mother’s reply.
At that time, however many years ago it was, my wife and I were both working full time, making decent if not outstanding salaries.
In hindsight, what should have happened is that my wife and I should have bought the house from my parents for $1 and we would have reversed the situation: we would be the home owners and my parents would have been the tenants … much like the later “I Love Lucy” episodes, where the tenant Ricardos moved from Manhattan to the Connecticut “farmlands,” and the landlord Mertzes followed them to God’s country, with the two couples reversing the roles they had while living in New York City, and the Ricardos became the landlord and the Mertzes became the tenant.
It could all have worked out, but that is not a situation that my parents wanted, and quite honestly, it was never pursued as it should have been.
They literally begged me to sign the paperwork so they could obtain the reverse mortgage.
I begrudgingly signed the papers, because I felt that if my parents absolutely needed to do this, then as their son, it was my obligation to sign off on it.
Heck, these were my parents; I loved them each dearly, they had helped me out of rough spots in the past—my divorce for one—and now, they were in a rough spot and needed my help, so I gave it to them.
The situation worked for all these years, My parents were able to keep the house under their name and keep the lifestyle they enjoyed with the money they received each month, which they were under no obligation to pay back … and consequently, never did, not one cent of it.
My family enjoyed being right there with them, even though this thing continued to gnaw at me over all these years, even though I rarely talked about it—
Until my father got sick, and I saw unfolding around me a ball of confusion with this reverse mortgage that I never knew existed.
My father went to his grave firmly believing that my family and I would be entirely taken care of when he and my mother would leave this earth, as he was led to believe that there was plenty of money in the bank for us to live at the home for as long as we wanted to.
Unfortunately, this was an untruth, perpetuated by my mother, who my father trusted with not only his life, but his finances.
I later found out that my parents’ finances were in shambles, even with the reverse mortgage, and they had little in the bank to not only sustain my family and I, but also themselves.
I got wind of this situation during the final months of my father’s life, but my father kept on with thinking that everything was copacetic, so although I brought this situation up on occasion, my father was too set in his ways to really comprehend what I was talking about, and my mother kept mum on it, pretty much perpetuating this financial myth.
And my mother still was as sharp as a knife in her own life as my father’s was reaching its end point, and he trusted her entirely with their finances.
My father passed away a few years ago and sometime after, my mother showed signs of dementia, which we first discovered when she decided to throw out family heirlooms for absolutely no reason, some of which I was able to retrieve form the garbage and others which were lost to eternity.
We later found out that for months, she had not paid a single bill, and I eventually took over her finances and paid off everything I could. and I still do that to this day.
And yes, I did speak to my mother about the reverse mortgage while she still had all her faculties, before and after the dementia set in, and she later admitted to me that yes, this was pretty much a quick fix to ensure that she and my father could live out their golden years with splendor, and yes, she really had no idea or understanding what she was getting into.
Many months have now passed, and as regular readers of this Blog know, my mother just got out of the hospital, and she is a shell of her former self, with her body wracked by several cancers that are eating away at her like termites eat away at wood.
We have no idea how much time she has to go on this earth, and when you see how much my mother has deteriorated—from a vibrant women to one who cannot walk or do much of anything now but sleep—it just breaks your heart, and my heart is in pieces right now—for the right reasons and the wrong reasons.
My mother is 92 years old, She has had a great life. She was married to my father for nearly 65 years. She raised two successful children and has five grandchildren who love her with all of their hearts.
But as she sits here deteriorating in front of my eyes, I know that when she goes to heaven, my family and I will have to go too, not to heaven, to a life of hell.
We cannot afford to continue to live here because of the tenets of the reverse mortgage, and we cannot ante up the hundreds of thousands of dollars that my parents received from the lender as they went through this situation, one they never really fully understood.
So where does that leave my family?
Pretty much nowhere, to be honest with you.
When her life expires, it will set us on an apparent six-month journey to pack up literally the past 30 years of our marriage—and for me the last nearly 50 years of my life, less the few years I spent not living in the house in my first marriage—and find another place to live.
Whatever proceeds of the eventual sale of the house has to be split with my sister’s family, so whatever we get from the house will be minimal.
I have started to get re-acquainted with the rental housing market to see what is out there, and even research the local town benefits for seniors, but they are scant, and clearly define what everyone already knows, that the term “affordable housing” clearly is defined by how you want to define it: either destitute housing for those who literally have less then nothing, up to premium housing of $150,000 or up.
My family and I cannot move from where we are, simply because my son gets a wealth of services that he cannot get anywhere else from living in New York State and Nassau County.
As a developmental disabled adult, he is better off here than probably anywhere else in the nation, so we really cannot move from where we are, and he is working in a part time job that he loves and where his employers love him, and I do not want to upset that apple cart, because about 75 percent of people in his position can’t get hired and do not work.
So this puts my family and I in a pickle not of our own design.
My mother is deteriorating, and while our full focus should be on her health and quality of life at this time, we almost have to look past that, to the inevitable, and concurrently focus on what the future holds for my wife, my son and myself.
It gnaws at me that I even have to think about such things as my mother lays there, feeble and frail, but I have to do this, because very selfishly now—and I am very guilty about this--life is for the living, and when my mother goes, we don’t have a leg to stand on.
We recently had the house appraised, and my thinking was right about the worth of this house, and with a ready housing market that has more demand than supply, this house will sell pretty quickly.
I spoke with the appraiser, and the house could be marketed as one which has a ready-made tenant who would help to pay for the mortgage with our monthly rent payments, but the likelihood of anyone wanting to enter into such an agreement is unlikely.
I have tried to interest my daughter in the house—the most likely successor to my parents as the next family-related owner of the house—but I can’t rely on her to do this, and I won’t ever blame her if she turns us down.
So the whole ball of wax here is that with al the research I have done on the situation, all that I have been told, and all that I know from the lender, my family and I are screwed every which way.
We literally have nowhere to go, as everything is dependent on how long my mother has on this earth. Her life—and death—is fully intertwined with our future, and our situation clearly stinks.
My entre family gets Social Security, as my wife and I retired—me forced to, my wife had to because she had had enough of the grind—and my son gets Social Security disability.
Due to m wife’s recent injury, she has not worked in more than a month, and has a Workman’s Comp hearing coming up next month.
She has no idea what is going to happen with that hearing, but she does know that she cannot do the job that she was injured at anymore … but she was never fired from her job, and cannot quit, because then her hopes of unemployment will go up in smoke.
Me, I lost my job—and virtually, the life I have led for decades—when the company I worked for went out of business in October 2019, and although I have applied for other jobs—full time, part time, freelance, both in and out of my specialty and expertise—no one wants a 66 year old as much as they didn’t want a 62 year old, the age I was when I lost my job.
The pandemic did not help, as the lack of hiring during that roughly two-year period naturally aged me even more, from 62 to 63 to 64, and eventually to 65 and to the current 66 as we went into the endemic phase of the existence of this virus.
I am very proud to have a freelance job, but let’s be honest about it, at this stage of the game, I should be making at least three times what I am earning from this job as a full-time worker, but beggars can’t be choosers.
My wife and I both had meager 401ks that currently sit in investment, but even if you put everything we have together, it doesn’t amount to much more than a hill of beans in today’s world.
As you know, I was forced to get a new car when the other unexpectedly gave out, and I can’t even enjoy the car, because it has presented me with a new exorbitant bill that I now have to pay off each month for the nest 72 months.
So right now, we have nothing, have no idea how things will turn out or when, and we sit in limbo.
And that is pretty much why I am typing this entry to you starting at 2 a.m. and finishing after 4 a.m., as I cannot sleep from worry, and I am typing this out with my mother’s monitor at my side, taking peaks at her as she sleeps away another night—or needs me to help her for a variety of reasons that I don’t have to spell out for you.
I am in a quandary because I have such mixed emotions about everything that is going on.
It is almost that I am hoping that my mother defies the odds—like former President Jimmy Carter has done—and actually survives in home hospice for not days or months, but years.
That would give my family and I a little time to breathe as far as looking for new living quarters, to assess our options, and to do what we need to do to firm up our own situation.
But on the other hand, that is just so selfish to think about right now, a my mother lays in her bed withering away to nothing.
I will continue to do research on this situation however long my mother has to go, but I do think of miracles, things that perhaps can be done to make the situation a better one for my family and I.
Of course, I could win the lottery, because someone always wins the lottery, but to be more realistic, there must be something else I can do to make my family’s future a much better one.
I could open a Go Fund Me account—or someone else could—to help raise money to keep us where we are, or at lest provide money to make it easier for us to afford another place where we can live.
Yes, it is begging, but like the song title goes, in the situation my family and I are in, we “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.”
I could devise a plan, where I throw myself at the mercy of the world, declaring that I will do anything—within reason—to get a certain amount of money to help my family and I out of this mess.
Honestly, I don’t know what else I could do at this point.
So, I am throwing myself at your mercy.
Do you have any ideas?
Do you know anyone who might like to move into a beautiful house in a great neighborhood with all the amenities and have a ready-made tenant to help them pay off their mortgage?
At this point, I am willing to listen to anything.
Thanks for reading this long Rant, but everything is starting to come to the fore now, I can’t sleep, I am worried about my mother,, and I hate to say it this way, but I am actually more worried about my family’s future …
I know that is an absolutely horrific thing to say,, but I have to be realistic.
My wife and I are both 66 years old, my son will be 28 years of age in a few weeks, and we are in an abyss that we didn’t create but will engulf us if we don’t do something about it, and do it soon.
Any ideas you might have will be appreciated.
And again, there has to be more to retirement, because I have had the worst retirement possible.
There has to be something better, there just has to be … .
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