A Will is such an important document, allowing you to state exactly who you wish your belongings and assets to be passed on to.  Without a Will, the laws of intestacy will determine who receives what and it may not be allocated in the way you would have wished.  If you don’t have a Will:

• Your spouse may not inherit the whole of your estate
• Your partner will not inherit anything
• Your loved ones may face lengthy and costly legal procedures, causing additional distress at a time that is already very emotional for them
• You may pay more inheritance tax than you would if you had a Will.

With a Will, you can make sure the ones you care about receive what you want them to.  You can leave gifts and presents for family members or friends.  You can make provisions for the care of pets or state your funeral wishes.  You can also set up a trust within a Will, which passes on your assets in the way you want them to be passed on.  A Will helps to give you and your loved ones peace of mind.

Another important part of planning for your future is arranging your Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPAs).  An LPA allows you to appoint people you trust to act on your behalf if you are no longer able to, or if you no longer wish to, make these decisions.  There are two types of LPAs – Property and Financial Affairs LPAs and Health and Welfare LPAs.

• A Property and Financial LPA allows someone to deal with decisions about your finances and property, including paying bills or selling your property.  This type of LPA can be used if you no longer wish to make decisions or if you become unable to.
• A Health and Welfare LPA allows you to appoint someone to make decisions on your care and wellbeing.  This could be anything from deciding on medical treatment to choosing a care home.  This type of LPA can only be used if you become unable to make decisions.

Without an LPA, your loved ones will find it extremely difficult to make decisions for you as they will have no legal authority to act on your behalf.  Making an LPA ensures that decisions about you and your affairs are made by the people you trust.

Planning for the future doesn’t have to be complex.  Our partner, Key Retirement Solutions, offer a simple and hassle-free estate planning service.  Their specialists offer an over the phone service so you can arrange all your important documents from the comfort of your own home.  Your completed documents will be sent securely through the post for you to sign and their experts will be on hand to answer any questions you may have.  Give you and your loved ones peace of mind by arranging your Will and LPAs today.

*Unbiased Oct 2011

At Equity Release Warehouse we’re delighted to bring you this amazing Aviva offer.  Exclusive to our partner, this deal not only includes £1,000 cashback, but also the lowest interest rate on an Aviva Lifetime Mortgage AND a valuation contribution fee of up to £270, making this deal the best Aviva offer on the UK market!  This deal is so exclusive you can’t even get it by going direct to Aviva.

Cashback is a great way of reducing the total amount you need to borrow and as a result paying less interest overall.  As an illustration: £1,000 cashback means you can take out an equity release loan of £49,000 rather than £50,000 – that’s £1,000 you won’t be paying ANY interest on!  The deal also boasts the lowest interest rate on an Aviva Lifetime Mortgage, meaning less interest builds up each year than with higher interest rate plans.  Add to that a £270 contribution towards your survey.

Don’t miss out!  Make sure you take advantage of this amazing offer by booking an appointment with our partner advisers.  Offering consultations in the comfort of your own home, you’ll get the opportunity to find out more about equity release and how it could transform your life.  Your local adviser will explain the different types of equity release schemes and help you decide which one is right for you. They’ll also talk you through how equity release may affect your entitlement to state benefits, as well as explaining how all plans will reduce the value of your estate.  This initial appointment is no-obligation and, best of all, totally free of charge.

After your initial consultation, your expert adviser will search the whole of the equity release market to find the best deal for you.  Our partner has access to some of the best exclusive offers around, so even if this one’s not right for you, they’ll find one that is.

Book an appointment today or call us for FREE on 0808 156 2669 to find out more about this great deal.

This is an equity release plan. To understand the features and risks ask for a personalised illustration.

Retirement Links is a website designed and developed for the publication of retirement and pension news, articles and publications on the Internet.

Constantly searching the Internet, relevant information is collated and posted to the website as soon as it becomes available, providing a source of interesting up-to-date content for the UK retirement and pension’s readership.

In addition to the news, articles and publications content published on Retirement Links, the website is a repository of other useful information, including links to websites on subjects like pension legislation, financial planning, annuities, equity release, pension release, retirement property, life insurance, social benefits and seniors’ concessions etc.

Retirement Links is constantly evolving and striving to provide meaningful information on the subjects of retirement and pensions. With the ever increasing number of people heading for, or already in retirement, it is hoped that the information available on the website will prove to be an invaluable asset in the search for retirement and pensions’ knowledge.

Retirement can be very daunting for many, with the worry of leaving your 9-5 routine, for a life of freedom to do exactly how you please. How on earth to do you start to fill that time and how do you learn how to manage your money and pension plan to last you throughout retirement.

Retirement lounge brings together a wealth of information to help those who are about to move into retirement or those already in their retirement. Featuring a wide range of articles from entertainment, jokes and stories, to news, financial and retirement planning there’s a whole load of everything to keep you super busy for hours on end.
Retirement-lounge.com encourage others to come along and participate in all the fun as a way of sharing their retirement stories and advice which may be of help to others.

You can even share the news and events with other friends who you think may enjoy the interactive website with their social media tool.

For more information visit retirement-lounge.com today.

The report showed that one in three over-65′s owe money on mortgages, loans and cards, with many having to deal with credit card pensioner debt as high as £90,000. Some pensioners are having to deal with unsecured loans of £250,000, while others are struggliing to pay off £340,000 mortgages.

The rise in debt is believed to have stemmed from the credit crunch, with many pensioners having to revert to borrowing in order to make ends meet.

And 2011 isn’t looking any rosier. The first quarter of 2011 showed that 31 per cent of customers were using all or some of the cash from an equity release plan to clear off debts compared with 23 per cent for the last three months of 2010.

The worry of debt in retirement is something that many pensioners are struggling to face. In 2010 pensioners were being set back £385 per month in order to clear off their debts. With the average pensioner household income at £17,727** before tax, this means that 26 per cent of income goes on debt repayments.

However we can’t always rely on averages. Some over 65s are paying as much as £2,099 per month on mortgages, with others making £1,200 a month repayments on loans and £2,000 a month on credit cards.

Key’s analysis showed that the average customer owed £30,838 on a mortgage, while the average credit card debts stood at £10,296. Average outstanding loans were at £11,386.

Dean Mirfin, Group Director at Key Retirement Solutions said, “Pensioners in line with the rest of the country have struggled to borrow money in the past three years and have increasingly turned to credit cards to tide them over.

“They are also feeling the effects of the endowment mis-selling scandal as they’re coming to the end of mortgage terms and struggling to pay off mortgages as their endowments have missed payout forecasts.

“It all adds up to a major squeeze on incomes but there is a silver lining in that they could literally be sitting on considerable wealth in their own home. Clearing debt will transform their finances and provide a welcome boost.”

This wealth could be freed up by downsizing or releasing some of the equity tied up in a persons home.

* Key Retirement Solutions own database 4,400 customers applying for equity release products in 2010

** ONS Wealth and Assets Survey

I was fortunate to be able to retire comparatively early. Although I had enjoyed my career, I had various interests outside of work and wanted to have more time to pursue them. I appreciated, however, that many people had little idea on how they would spend the large amount of additional leisure time they would have on retirement. They were daunted by the prospect and feared they would not have enough to do to occupy their days, especially those who had had little time, during their working lives, to devote to leisure activities.

It therefore seemed to me to be a good idea to start a website (Alive & Twitching) aimed at members of the Baby Boom generation who had either just retired or were on the verge of doing so. Initially, the site was devoted to advice on retirement planning and similar matters, where I was able to draw from my own experiences. As time went by, I expanded the scope of the blogs to cover other subjects in which I am interested. Thus the categories currently comprise:

• Retirement
• A Bit of Fun
• Books
• Films and TV
• Food & Drink
• Music
• Musings and Rants
• Travel
• Sport

If you think the site may be of interest to you, its name is aliveandtwitching.co.uk. Please feel free to comment on any blog that catches your interest. Not enough readers do.

Our equity release expert will comment about the latest news in the equity release industry and how changes could potentially affect you.

Customers should not use the information in this blog to form an opinion about equity release in relation to their individual requirements. If you are considering equity release or need more information, it is advised you speak to an equity release adviser who can give you more information based upon your individual circumstances.

equity release calculator help

As we head towards the happy days of retirement, many of us hope we will be in a strong financial position that will allow us to live comfortably and enjoy a lifestyle doing the things that we have always longed to do.

From a spot of travelling around the world, to increased time and money to spend on home improvements, the world of retirement certainly doesn’t look like a bleak place to be…providing you have the funds to cater for your new way of living.

Unfortunately, the current economical climate has not been kind to us, with many of us having to face the problems of redundancy, increasing council tax costs and falling annuity rates. Low interest rates have also potentially affected people’s hard earned savings, which many hoped would last them through their retirement years.

Many retirees have the added value of owning their own home, which they most likely bought for a fraction of its current market value. However many don’t see it as an added comfort, with their mindset heavily focused upon the idea of having cash in their hands, as opposed to it being trapped in their bricks and mortar.

Like every problem there is always a solution and in this instance the answer may lie with equity release. Nowadays homeowners between the ages of 55-95 can use the value of their home to generate either a tax free lump sum or a regular income, or both.

An equity release plan will allow you to safely unlock cash from your home, normally without the stress of having to make any monthly repayments whatsoever. There are a plethora of equity release plans available on the market, so it is essential that you speak to a dedicated equity release adviser who can present you with all the options before you sign on the dotted line.

Equity release was once seen as a negative move, having received a lot of bad press over the years. This has led to many people being disheartened about using the service and not seeing it as a viable option at all. Nowadays equity release providers are fully regulated by the FSA and have to comply with their set standards in order to qualify as a safe equity release firm to use when releasing cash from your home.

To see how much money you could release from your home why not try out an equity release calculator? Answering just a few simple questions, you can find out whether you can release some of the cash locked up in your property and an estimated amount of what you could potentially receive. It’s completely free to use and could potentially see you spending the rest of your retirement years living a lifestyle that you deserve.

An equity release calculator is simply a way of finding out whether you qualify for equity release and how much you may be able to release from your home.

At Equity Release Warehouse, we aim to make the whole process as simple as possible through our free, easy to use equity release calculator.

The first step is to fill out the calculator form making sure that you don’t leave any gaps.

Please be aware that to qualify for an equity release plan, you must be;

Once you have completed the form click Calculate. The second screen should show your results.

The results explained

Based upon the data you entered into the equity release calculator, you will find out whether you qualify for equity release.

If you have qualified for equity release, then the results will be broken down based upon the different equity release schemes available and an estimated amount of how much cash you may be able to release from your home.

The three different schemes featured below will appear on your screen.

Lifetime Mortgage

– A lifetime mortgage plan involves a loan secured against the value of your home to generate cash. You should see an estimated amount of how much you may be able to release if you went ahead with a lifetime mortgage plan.

Enhanced Lifetime Mortgage

– You will notice that the enhanced lifetime mortgage plan allows you to release more than a lifetime mortgage. This figure is dependent upon your health and lifestyle. One of our team members will be able to explain whether you are eligible for this type of plan.

Home Reversion Plan

– A home reversion plan allows you to sell all or part of your home in exchange for a cash lump sum and a guaranteed lifetime lease to remain in your property. No estimated amount will appear next to this option as we will need further information from you to determine whether you qualify.

After you have used the equity release calculator you will receive a call from our partner to discuss the results you have received and to find out more about your individual circumstances. From here you can book an appointment with one of their specialist equity release advisers who will come to your home to talk you through the different schemes available and whether equity release is right for you. There is never any pressure to proceed throughout the whole process and you don’t have to commit to anything.
This is an equity release plan. To understand the features and risks ask for a personalised illustration.

Over the years many people have seen equity release as a negative turn; however the industry has since been heavily reviewed and now regulated by the FSA as well as many providers regulated by SHIP (Safe Home Income Plans).

While equity release or surrounding topics may come into your conversations once in a while, we want you to be completely up to date and in the know with what’s going on and how it all works.

This blog is here to give you information and advice about equity release as well as a wide range of other topics which may be of interest to you.

We may sometimes get technical in our talk; however don’t worry! At Equity Release Warehouse we are committed to ensuring that you are never left in the dark, providing you with your very own equity release jargon buster which we will keep updating once a new word comes along.