The financial news that actually matters
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No monthly mortgage payment ever comes due on a reverse mortgage, which is often the entire appeal for a retiree relying on Social Security and savings. But two ordinary homeownership costs keep coming due anyway, and missing either one can put the home itself at risk. Property taxes and homeowners insurance sit outside the loan…
Sixteen states got a break on home insurance costs this year while the rest of the country kept absorbing increases, according to rate data Insurance.com released on August 27, 2026, in a report distributed nationally through the data-journalism outlet Stacker. The same data set shows one state moving sharply in the other direction: Nebraska, where…
State insurance regulators had never assembled a single national picture of how often companies decline to renew a homeowner’s policy, until now. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners published that analysis on August 5, 2026, drawing on seven years of data collected directly from insurers by state regulators. It found company-initiated non-renewals climbing in every…
Homeowners insurance was long treated as a fixed line in the household budget, a bill that rose gently and rarely required a second thought. That is no longer true in much of the country. Insurers are raising premiums sharply and, in the areas they consider riskiest, declining to renew policies at all. The squeeze falls…
One of the harshest surprises in retirement lending arrives when a reverse-mortgage borrower dies and the surviving husband or wife discovers whether they can stay in the home. For years, spouses who were left off the loan were pushed out of houses they had lived in for decades. Federal rules now offer real protection, but…
For decades, a handful of states let local governments do something that struck many homeowners as plainly unfair: seize a home over unpaid property taxes, sell it, and keep the entire proceeds, including any value far above the actual tax debt. A retiree who owed a few thousand dollars could lose a home worth hundreds…
For most retirees, the paid-off or nearly paid-off house is the single largest asset they own, which makes it the biggest target when a lawsuit judgment or an unpayable debt lands. A homestead exemption is the legal shield that can keep some or all of that equity out of a creditor’s reach. It is one…
A reverse mortgage lets an older homeowner turn part of their home equity into cash without a monthly payment, but the loan does not simply vanish when the borrower passes away. The moment the last surviving borrower dies, the balance comes due, and the family members who inherit the house step into a countdown most…
Selling a big house and buying something smaller sounds like an obvious way to cut costs in retirement, and often it is. But the math has shifted. With borrowing far more expensive than it was a few years ago, a retiree who trades a paid-off or low-rate home for a smaller place financed at today’s…
Buying a home comes with a stack of fees at closing, and one of the least understood is title insurance. Unlike the policies that protect against a future fire or storm, title insurance guards against the past — a defect in the chain of ownership that already exists on the day of purchase but has…