Enhancing Retirement Success Rates in the United States: Leveraging Reverse Mortgages, Delaying Social Security, and Exploring Continuous Work

This book and the underlying research address the questions: “How successful are U.S. retirees at sustaining assets from retirement to death?” and “What retirement strategies will enhance their ability to live a successful retirement?” Taking a hard look at real-world retirement statistics from multiple government surveys to answer those questions, it calculates the effects of specific strategies on retirement sustainability. It also discusses the background to prior retirement planning research and describes the three research groups used: 1) determining the success rates of the base population considering only social capital annual income and distributions from portfolios of financial assets, 2) adding the strategy of home equity conversion mortgages, and 3) increasing annual income through delayed social security benefit claiming and continuing work after retirement. The book then examines and compares the results for each to determine whose retirement will be most enhanced by the strategies. Lastly, it presents case studies applying research to real-world financial planning cases.