Joe Tomlinson, editor of Journal of Personal Finance, summarized research showing Standby Reverse Mortgages can double sustainable withdrawal rates. Reviewing a Journal of Financial Planning paper he concludes: “This study shows how home equity can be integrated into a total retirement-planning context. Clients who have investment portfolios but may also need to utilize home equity to support retirement must face a complicated optimization problem. Studies that have looked at investment portfolios must be expanded to integrate home equity. This research by Pfeiffer, Salter and Evensky gets us off to a good start.”

See Joe’s post on advisorperspectives.com http://bit.ly/1m59gfT (free subscription available http://bit.ly/O08sgk)