Over 55-year olds are ambitious and young at heart!

Many 55-year-olds still have dreams and aspirations they would like to accomplish within their lifetime and see their pending retirement as a time to finally take steps to achieving these goals and ambitions.

For many people, retirement is an exciting time when they have the freedom of time to explore the incredible experiences that life has to offer which surprisingly is not always money related.

Popular retirement ambitions include:

• Foreign travel
• Buying a sports car
• Volunteer work
• Learning a foreign language
• Taking up a new sport or hobby for example golf, mountain climbing or sailing
• Downsizing their home
• Paying off their existing mortgage

Thankfully, optimism still prevails amongst the Legal and General survey participants who provided these statistics * and more than half considered they still had the time to achieve these goals in their retirement!

Remaining curious about life and wanting to fully participate in the wide array of beautiful opportunities that life has to offer is healthy and promotes longevity. Nobody really wants age or circumstances to stop us doing what we want in life, do we? However, our perception of reality often leads us to believe that our dreams cannot be fulfilled, that our health is not strong enough, or that our finances do not lend the extra capital needed to pursue such ambition.

We have the dreams, but do we have the means?

It seems that once again the number one barrier in preventing us from achieving our dreams - and this is true for any age group - is money. The magical, mysterious, yet malicious M-word. After paying the obligatory life-style bills to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies, not everyone has the extra cash to fund their life-style ambitions and pleasures. Some of us have tried to organise our finances so that in retirement, when a professional salary may or may not be contributing to our income, we can rely on investments or savings to fund our lifestyle. But what can you do if money is short, if the M-word is meagre and if the barrier between our flight towards freedom and our stationary existence is not budging? Consider releasing some of the equity in your property and learn to fly again!

What is Equity Release and how does it work?

A lifetime mortgage, the most popular type of Equity Release, allows you to release money from your home without having to move. It’s a loan secured against your property which can be used to provide you with an additional source of income to top up your pension for example or finance your ‘to-do’ list of life goals.

It’s really very simple: you have been repaying your existing mortgage on a monthly basis for years and built-up equity in your property. With the equity you have built up in your property you could access some of it through Equity Release. A Lifetime Mortgage lets you regain access to some of that money to use in a variety of ways. You can choose to make ad hoc payments to reduce the outstanding balance or allow the interest to roll up, this is then repaid when you or the last remaining applicant passes away or goes into long term care.

It is so important to us, as individuals that we feel fulfilled in life, that we have the financial freedom to be able to achieve our desires and that we have the power as individuals to choose our own future, as much as is reasonably possible.

It is important to us, as a company, that we can support the kind of exciting and meaningful life experience that our clients wish to achieve. If you think that Equity Release may be right for you, please feel free to contact Kevin Woods on 01489 454545 or email kevin@laterlivingnow.com to discuss your situation in confidence, and without charge or obligation of any kind.

*Legal and General Home Finance Limited. Q0057544/SUB0192780/Aug 2018