How your home could help pay for your retirement

Lifetime mortgage could help you live a more colourful retirement

AROUND 1.5 million Britons are set to delay retirement as they worry about being able to fund their later years, new research by Legal & General reveals.

The research also shows that more than a quarter of over-50s plan to carry on working i n d e f i n i t e l y. Th e re t i re ment planning experts Legal & General say now is the time for over-55s to review their finances – and a lifetime mortgage could be the right option for you. So if you have worked hard to pay for your own home and you are over 55, you could now let your home look after you with the help of a Legal & General Lifetime Mortgage.

They’re a type of equity release which lets you release tax-free cash as a loan secured against your home, which you can take as a lump sum or regular income. The loan and the compound interest is usually repaid when the l ast remaining borrower dies or moves out of the home into long-term care.

Take Su e Patton , 72, from Brighton, who was worried that she would have to sell her threebedroom terrace in order to pay off her interest-only mortgage, and move away from her family and friends as a result.

So Sue took out a Legal & General Lifetime Mortgage – this meant she could stay in her home, which is just a short drive from her daughter Colleen, son-in-law and grandchildren – as well as pay off the old mortgage and clear her other debts. “I love being here and it’s so lovely I can stay,” she says.

And thanks to her new Legal & General mortgage, Sue has had enough money to do up her house. “I’ve kept enough aside to get a new kitchen, and to have the house decorated. It’s nice to know there is the option to draw on more money if anything else comes up in the future.”