Greetings again, everyone, Here's an idea worthy of consideration: avoid *all* management fees related directly to your currently envisaged (and future?) investments! Buy some shares of a high quality stock, paying a commission. Buy some shares of other companies, as well, in different industries, for diversification, paying a commission on each - lower if you purchase using a discount broker (but they don't give any advice).(1) If you own mutual funds now, that'll help with your important and legitimate concern for diversification. Hold it/them for 5 years - or 10, 20, 40 years, or for whatever length of time suits you. Even 10 - 20 months might do, now that the market's down - but there's major increased risk, especially if you *will* need the money in that time (but, with good credit, you might be able to defer liquidation by using the share certificates as collateral for a temporary loan till market recovers - how much steel do you have in your backbone?). Having stock share certificates issued costs $35. - 50. each; having mutual funds' units' certificates issued usually is done at no fee. With me, death may intervene ... but, crowding 80, I (who took the course that stockbrokers must take, 25 years ago - and others, later) have 80% of my assets in equity-based investments. Over 80% now, I guess, what with recent drops in the market, including, so far, drops in value of some recent purchases: but that's O.K., I expect them to come back, after while. In fact, I'm thinking of buying some more, likely will continue to do so from time to time during coming months. I live on less than my 3 + 1 pensions, so I don't need to draw on that money currently. Fees paid during the holding period? None! Most high quality companies pay dividends annually, which the company sends to you directly: an exception being Berkshire Hathaway A, Warren Buffett's vehicle, that grew from $12.00+ in '65 to $139,400. today ... which is down $1,705. from yesterday, so it was $141,105. yesterday ... annual compound growth rate of 24.35%.(2) Some financial advisors claim that he's never paid a dividend: they're wrong - he paid 10 cents in '67. In talking to a friend a while ago, he mentioned how I'd suggested to him something like 8 - 10 years ago that we share to purchase a share, when they were about US$22,000. (which would have required about CDN$30,000. then ... I almost went to the bank to borrow $8,000. to do it, but was a smidgeon short on nerve, though I then had no concern about the value of the stock). Also ... the increased value of the Canadian Dollar, since then ... would now pay off the loan (if I were dumb enough to sell the shares just now)! The shrinkage in value of the U.S. Dollar during those few years... would have paid the principal of my loan! Note the usual disclaimer found with all mutual fund and stock-related people: providers, managers, etc. ... "Your experience may vary ..." - 'cause the value of such assets varies a lot. Back to the story: sell the stock(s) now (though I usually don't like to sell several at the same time, either - same as not buy several at once), pay another commission. Management fees paid in between ? Zero. Not a cent ... unless you have a financial advisor and run your portfolio past that person for evaluation, occasionally, then pay evaluation fee directly. Actually, if your advisor is licensed to sell mutual funds, I think that you'll find that if s/he gives advice regarding stocks, s/he may well be breaking the law! In any case, if an advisor can sell one kind of products but not another, what possibility do you think that there may be that you might receive an occasional recommendation from him/her to purchase some of a product that s/he doesn't sell? It's mild and sunny here today - I'm doing a wash to hang on the outside line. Six hours later: Did - fairly comfortable hanging, but (not having slept last night), I overslept, took them down when some chillier, just before dark. Did it comfortably all in one go. Now doing some final drying, spread out in living room - taking some of the desert-like dryness out of a northern-area home in winter. I hope that you all have a fine winter weekend. ole joyful 1. With, say, under $10,000 - $20,000. to invest and not wanting to buy shares in one company each in three or four sections of the market, you can choose to buy some Exchange Traded Funds, each of which will give you a cross-section of each of various sections of the market: construction, real estate, medical, gold, consumer products, oil and gas, lumber, grains, ... even overseas markets, etc. Instead of about 1.5%(US) or 2.5%(CDN) annual management fee (or more) charged by most mutual fund managers, these (more passive) managers mostly charge about 0.4% annual management fee. If you assume long-term average growth rate of the market being 8%, instead of paying $1.00 in $4.00, $5.00 or $6.00 of your earnings in fees ... you'll be paying about $1.00 in $20.00! Some difference! If you figure that the market grows at 10% average ...do your own calculations. Plus - don't forget, you don't get to keep all of the rest of the growth ... the Income Tax people want part of it. Inflation accounts for part of it, as well. If you're paying $1.00 in $5.00 growth to the mutual fund manager, that's 20% of assumed growth ... do you pay more than that percentage to the Income Tax people? Have you ever thought that your mutual fund manager may be charging about the same rate as the income tax people? Hey - remember how I've said that there are two rats that eat your cheese? If you're using regular mutual funds ... looks like there may be three, and your mutual fund guy gets more or less what your income tax friends do ... and if it's capital gain, the income tax people are willing to wait for their bite of the cheese. Mutual fund managers ... and inflation ... get theirs every year! But... ask your mutual fund sales guy whether s/he can sell Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) ... cause only stockbrokers can sell 'em, around here. If your mutual fund salesperson can't sell 'em ... what's the probability that s/he might recommend that you buy them - from somebody else?? 2. Don't have a financial calculator? Use Rule of 72: Divide number of doubles of the asset value into the number of years invested, then divide that figure into 72 to find rate of growth. You get $12.00(+?) doubles to 24, 48, 96, 192, 384, 768, 1,536, 3,072, 6,144, 12,288, 24,576, 49,152, 98,304, 196,608 ... 141,000 is about half way to the 196,608, so there are 13.5 doubles, right? From 1965 to 2008 is 43 years, divided by 13.5 produces 3.185. Divide 72 by 3.185 gives 23.59 - close to the 24.35% that my financial calculator indicated. Didn't know the Rule of 72 before? Remember my oft-repeated phrase, "It's a poor day that one doesn't learn something"? Today's your lucky day! See how much more power your brain has than you thought? Just needs a bit of exercise/sharpening from time to time, like a scythe, to get more/better work done! Take that, all of you essential, but drattedly frustrating at times, computers! o j

Hey Gina, sorry I didn't see your post for a few days. The basic idea behind a reverse mortgage is, as Joyfulguy said, that it can help a retired person who has limited income but a large asset in the form of a home. Typically when the person dies, the reverse mortgage would be paid in full in a lump sum by the person's heirs, who would sell the home, pay off the mortgage, and keep whatever proceeds of the sale, if any, are left over. You said your boyfriend lives with you. I assume his "official" place of residence is at the house where his parents live. It'd probably have to be, because most lenders will only do reverse mortgages on owner occupied homes. This fact that he doesn't really live there would seem to be somewhat of a gray area, and might be something you want to discuss candidly with the lender, because in most cases the loan is payable in full if the person moves out of the house. What if he decides he wants to buy some other house to live in, say, if your relationship with him ends? Then he's got a problem because he has to pay off the reverse mortgage in order to do that, probably. Here's the other thing: You didn't say how old your boyfriend is, but since his parents are still around, I'm going to assume he's not all that old, and since both of his parents are living, he probably has decent longevity genes, too. So, he's going to be around for a while. That limits the value of a reverse mortgage, and will restrict the amount a lender will lend on one. I assume what he's thinking is that with the reverse mortgage he can take an advance against it, pay off the balance still owed on this house, and then get a check every month instead of writing one every month. That sounds good, but that's not free money - it's all borrowed money that he's paying interest on, and when he eventually does sell the house, it just reduces what he gets from the sale. Just from the facts as they appear here, it does not seem as though a reverse mortgage is going to do that much for your boyfriend. His borrowing ability will be reduced because he's not that old, and if he winds up paying the mortgage off himself because he sells the house someday, then he's going to have to pay off a bunch of interest just to have a clear deed to the house. Then, too, doing the reverse mortgage now when he apparently doesn't really need to do it means he will not have that option later if he does really need it. Right now he's got $210,000 in equity in a house and he's got many years of life left. Why start chipping away at that equity by paying ever-increasing interest on a big reverse mortgage balance? I can't think of a good reason to do it. When he's 80, there may be a much better reason to do that, and it'd be nice to have that option then rather than to use it now.

Snidely, I'm an accountant. I believe I have a pretty good grasp of debits vs. credits. In fact, I said in my post that there is no credit attached to the card, which should indicate that I do understand that it functions as a debit card instead of a credit. And if I didn't understand the difference, I think that the fact that I see the money coming out of my checking account vs. getting a monthly statement from the card company would have probably tipped me off. I well understand the difference between debit and credit cards. I realize that any card connected to your bank account is not truly a credit card regardless of how it is branded. The cards my bank issues are branded Visa cards. The money is coming directly out of the bank account, so it functions as a debit card. But because it is a Visa and not simply a bank issued debit card, our liability for unauthorized purchases is $0. Plus we can run it without a PIN, which you can't do with a card that functions only as a debit. At one point years ago, our bank had only bank-issued debit cards attached to accounts. This post was edited by kittiemom on Sun, Jul 20, 14 at 9:23

HI Kathy....so good to hear from you...sorry to hear your husband isn't doing real good. I think it is a smart move to be by your kids...but I'll bet it's hard to leave that place. Our place gets harder and harder for Denny to take care of. We have a young man at church who comes out all the time to help Denny. They've become good friends.. They come out and play card games or dice games with us quite often. They are much younger than us but I've never fit with my own age group...I'm too imature...hehe I sure hope when things slow down you will come here more often...we miss you. patti