When planning for retirement, one of your main concerns may be about money. You may have grand plans to travel and have an active later life.  But then find that those plans are compromised by lack of money.

Perhaps you struggling to pay your bills since you retired? Alternatively, you might feel comfortable now, but what happens when an emergency pops up? If you own your own home, you can avoid any financial worries by drawing money from its equity using a reverse mortgage. A retirement reverse mortgage is exactly that, a loan designed specifically for retirees. It might benefit you more than a traditional loan because, unlike such a loan, it allows you to borrow the funds for several years without paying them back. The balance is due when you leave your home, but in the meantime there are no ongoing mortgage bills to add to your financial burdens. You can just spend the funds and relax.

Fortunately, you do have options and a scheme such as equity release, which allows you to unlock the equity that has built up in your home, could be the answer. Take a look at some options available for funding your retirement:

Pensions

First and foremost, you may be receiving pension payments. This could be a pension from work, a state pension or both. This will give you a limited amount of income that will be paid to you in weekly or monthly instalments. Because your pension payments will be paid monthly, this won’t provide the lump sum you will need to fund a large purchase, such as a retirement home. Nonetheless, having a pension will ensure there is money available on a regular basis for bills and food.

Equity

If you need a lump sum to pay for a holiday or to fund the purchase of a retirement home, you could consider raising money from your property. Through equity release you could unlock some, or all of the value of your home, as a tax-free lump sum to use how you wish. You may decide you want to stay in your own home and use money to travel, or you may want to use it to help you move into a retirement property. Whatever your needs, there’s an equity release scheme to suit your needs and a professional adviser can talk through your options with you.

If you are thinking of equity release, you can find out how much money you can unlock by using an equity release calculator.

The McCarthy and Stone equity release calculator will help you to work out the sums quickly and easily.

Savings

Finally, if you have any savings, these could come in handy at this time as you can use them to boost your pension income.

But not everyone has the luxury of a pot of savings, which is one of the reasons alternatives such as equity release can prove useful. Luckily youngest is starting early collecting his pocket money in this cute “doggy bank” he decorated.

However, it’s not too late to save and it makes sense to save any surplus from equity or pension income, once bills have been paid – that way you’ll have an emergency fund to help with unexpected costs.