According to new research from Age UK, nearly a quarter of people in their early 50s are afraid of falling on hard times and losing their homes.
23% of the 971 people polled by Age UK aged between 50 and 55 feared that they would not be able to maintain their mortgage payments or rent should their financial position worsen.
Despite being at the peak of their earning power at this stage in life, thousands appear to be plagued by financial worries.
Redundancy or ill health can both have a devastating impact on your ability to keep your home, at any stage in life.
So what steps can you take to avoid losing your home?
Living within your means and making provision for tough times are both important.
Those at the greatest risk of being unable to keep up mortgage payments when income is lost tend to have the biggest financial commitments.
When the gap between your income and committed expenditure is very small, it becomes challenging to keep up essential payments should your income be reduced or stopped.
We believe that everyone should have an ’emergency fund’; at least three or six months of typical expenditure held in savings and available in the event of a rainy day.
As you get older, this emergency fund should grow larger, as your ability to replace lost earnings can become more limited.
Making sufficient provision for a retirement income is also important, as ill health or redundancy in your early or late 50s can often force a decision to retire early.
Many of the clients we work with who retired earlier than the traditional retirement ages of 60 or 65 did so because of these circumstances out of their control, rather than due to choice. It was fortunate that the decision to retire early was affordable.
The combination of an affordable lifestyle, sizeable emergency fund and retirement income provision is usually enough to avoid losing your home in later life, and certainly good steps to take to ensure financial peace of mind.
