For those of you who swear time passes faster than you can keep track, you’re not alone. Many baby boomers have been so busy raising families, working jobs, and living their lives, they forgot to save up for retirement. Or worse, they just plain kept putting it off.
But if you find yourself nearing 62 years of age, and you haven’t saved up a whole lot for the golden years, there is one very solid option you can take advantage of now while interest rates are low. That is, a reverse mortgage.
If you’ve lived in your home for many years and been paying the mortgage religiously, month after month, you can apply for one of several low-interest reverse mortgages. In a recent statement by All Reverse Mortgage, since interest rates, which are published by the federal office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), are just one primary factor in determining the amount of money you can receive, borrowers will more than likely receive more proceeds and benefits from their low-interest rate reverse mortgage. But first, you have to qualify for such a loan.
For those of you who don’t qualify, or don’t even own a home, you might find yourself in the precarious position of depending on social security as a means of getting through retirement. But say the experts at The Motley Fool, there is another option for boosting your retirement savings that are rapidly growing in popularity. Investing in Bitcoin.
With inflation rising rapidly, and Social Security in danger of fizzling out by the time you reach 62, you might be eager to buy as much Bitcoin (BTC) as you can. After all, since its white paper was first introduced to the financial market back in 2009, its average annual rate of return has been over 200 percent.
But BTC is also very volatile, with up and down price swings of 30percent or even 50 percent in a single day. That said, is BTC a safe investment bet?
Social Security Vs. Bitcoin
Considering Social Security is about to fall off a cliff in the not too distant future, and that BTC is growing at a rapid rate (El Salvador just voted it in as legal currency—the first country to do so), you should ask yourself if your financial focus should be not on the former, but on the latter. Yet financial experts will tell you there’s no reason to pit both assets against one another since both can potentially deliver nice paydays. However, both could potentially let you down also.
Bitcoin
Again, BTC can be extremely volatile and can go up or down in price just with the news media cycles alone. But generally speaking, it is sure to grow in value as time passes. It remains, however, very young. While some merchants will accept it as a means of payment, most will not. Its moniker as “cryptocurrency” however, can be misleading. BTC is much more of a store of value, like gold for instance, than something to buy a cup of coffee with. You should think of it as digital gold.
Can it be guaranteed that BTC will increase your retirement portfolio significantly? That remains to be seen since anything can happen, such as government regulations, or even a potential federal banning such as the ban China just placed on the asset. While a ban is unlikely in the U.S. or Europe, regulation is almost a certainty. That means more price volatility is to follow for the unforeseeable future. If this is the kind of unstable scenario that will keep you up at night, perhaps you might not want to allocate too much BTC in your portfolio.
Social Security
The Social Security cash pool is almost dried up. That’s a sad fiscal fact. In order to compensate for this, the government might be faced with cutting benefits. This would spell disaster for those seniors who depend almost entirely on their monthly benefits to pay for food and more. Add to this Social Security’s inability to adjust for inflation and you begin to get an idea of the potential disaster that looms large in the not-to-distant future.
But if there is one thing positive to say about Social Security it’s this: it is not at risk of going away in its entirety. What this means is, even if monthly benefits are reduced, you can at least depend on getting something. And, as they say, something is better than nothing.
Purchasing Bitcoin
While it’s probable you will be receiving some sort of Social Security payout upon your 62nd birthday (that is, you elect to receive it then), a significant investment in BTC now can potentially make your monthly benefits irrelevant.
With BTC being a finite asset, it can only inflate in price over the long haul as retail, institutional, corporate, and now government investment increases. In fact, some BTC experts such as crypto guru, Willy Woo, predict BTC will be worth an estimated $300,000 to $500,000 per coin in just four to five years (expect temporary 30-50 percent pullbacks along the way up).
Now that’s significant financial food for thought as that magic 62nd birthday approaches.