Posted on October 26, 2005 by Steve
Retirees of Lucent Technologies
Inc. filed suit, saying the company illegally overcharged an estimated
120,000 management retirees for their health coverage and terminated
coverage for many retirees’ spouses.
The lawsuit, filed by three retirees in U.S. District
Court in Newark, N.J., maintains that Lucent, of Murray Hill, N.J.,
violated Internal Revenue Service rules when it cut the retirees’
health coverage. The rules state that when employers use the assets
from the employees’ pension plan to pay the employer’s share of their
retiree health-care costs, the employer can’t subsequently cut the
retirees’ health benefits for five years.
While these “maintenance of benefits” rules allow
employers to make some modest reductions to coverage during the
five-year moratorium, the suit alleges that Lucent exceeded the
reductions allowed when it made a series of more than 10 benefits cuts
from 2001 to the present, including increasing co-payments and
premiums, and eliminating company-paid coverage for dependents.
Read more…
Posted on October 26, 2005 by Steve
San Antonio Express News, October 25th, 2005
Texas voters began the process to allow
the state’s residents to tap into their home equity in 1997.
Proposition 7 would give them the opportunity to complete the job.
After lagging behind the rest of the nation, Texans now have the
ability to obtain home equity loans, home equity lines of credit and
reverse mortgages. They still cannot, however, obtain a reverse
mortgage line of credit.
For Texas seniors, that’s a major limitation. Homes are the single largest investments most people ever make.
Read more…
Posted on October 21, 2005 by Steve
The Wall Street Journal, September 12th, 2005
It’s a lock.
Lenders recently began offering to lock in interest
rates on reverse mortgages, which potentially could allow homeowners to
access thousands of dollars in additional equity.
Borrowers now will know at the time they’re applying
for government-insured reverse mortgages the exact amount they can
expect to receive when the loans are closed. Previously, borrowers were
given an estimated figure. If interest rates rose before loans closed,
borrowers would receive less money.
Reverse mortgages allow homeowners 62 or older — if
co-owned, the home’s youngest owner — to sell their homes back to the
banks in exchange for set monthly payments, a lump sum or a line of
credit.
With a reverse mortgage, instead of the borrower
making payments to the lender, as they do with a traditional mortgage,
the lender pays the borrower. The borrower keeps control of the house
and doesn’t have to pay the lender back as long as he or she continues
to live in the home. When the homeowner dies or moves out, the house is
sold, the lender is paid back with interest, and any money left over
goes to the homeowner or his or her estate….
Read more…
Posted on October 4, 2005 by Jason
One of the most emailed articles in the New York Times had this to say
“A real estate slowdown that began in a handful of cities this summer
has spread to almost every hot housing market in the country, including
New York. More sellers are putting their homes on the market,
houses are selling less quickly and prices are no longer increasing as
rapidly as they were in the spring, according to local data and
interviews with brokers.” You can read the full article here.
For many area of the country where prices haven’t risen faster than household incomes this won’t have that big an impact, but if
you live in one of the “frothy” areas it may be time to reconsider your
mix of assets…
