Keeping a clean and organized home can increase your personal comfort, make it more inviting for guests, and even improve your mental health! It is equally important to stay on top of home maintenance and repairs for a variety of reasons. These include protecting your health and safety as well as the value of the property. Unfortunately, if you are retired or nearing retirement age, you know full well what a challenge this can be. For one thing, the difficulty of do-it-yourself home projects increases with age, making them difficult to keep up with. For another, hiring a contractor or repairperson to do the work can be expensive, even for smaller projects. This creates an obstacle for those who are living on a fixed income or saving for retirement. Postponing these important repairs is known as deferred maintenance.
What is Deferred Maintenance?
“’Deferred maintenance and repairs’ are maintenance and repair activities that were not performed when they should have been or were scheduled to be and which, therefore, are put off or delayed for a future period. Maintenance and repairs are activities directed toward keeping fixed assets in an acceptable condition.”
-The Federal Accounting Standards and Advisory Board (FASAB), Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standard 40
Deferred maintenance often means the postponement of measures such as:
- Preventative maintenance
- Replacing broken parts or components
- Other measures intended to preserve or maintain the home
The term refers to delaying efforts that would preserve the value of the property. Deferred maintenance should not be confused with capital improvements, which FASAB defines as “activities directed towards expanding the capacity of an asset or otherwise upgrading it to serve needs different from, or significantly greater than, its current use.”
How Can I Stop Deferring My Home Maintenance?
As previously mentioned, these types of projects can be cost-prohibitive for people living on a fixed income. Fortunately, there is an option that has them in mind: a Reverse Mortgage. Part of the beauty of being a homeowner is the equity that you build in your property by paying it off and maintaining/improving it. Many people think that this equity can only be accessed by selling the property, but a Reverse Mortgage allows access while you are still living there happily.
This loan provides additional funds to those you already receive from your fixed income. They can be spent however you’d like and there are several ways to receive them, from a lump sum to a monthly payment to a line of credit.
This will provide you the financial freedom to address important maintenance and repairs now or set aside money for those in the future. Depending on what you qualify for, you may even find that you have enough left over to make capital improvements!
Would you like to learn more about maintaining your home with a Reverse Mortgage? Contact Retirement Home Equity Advisors today! We are a team of licensed specialists serving senior homeowners throughout the States of Arizona, California, and Colorado. We can help you strategically leverage your home equity to decrease risk and improve financial stability throughout your retirement.
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