The number a lender will approve and the number you can live with are different. The gap between them is where people get in trouble.

Every business owner has felt this one. The same deductions that shrink your tax bill shrink the income a lender can use.

People in the middle of a separation ask me if they can do anything with a mortgage before the divorce is final. The honest answer is sometimes.

Here is the part financial planners like. With a HECM set up as a line of credit, the unused portion grows over time. It is a standby bucket.

Two incomes usually carry more house. The part nobody mentions is that the weaker credit score tends to set the terms for both of you.

The business owners who close smoothly are the ones who called me a year before they wanted to move. Here is what that year looks like.

I meet a lot of parents who have decided they are renters now. Some of them are wrong about that, and I would like to be the one who tells them.

I hear the same worries every week, so here is the honest version of each one.

If the card has money in it, do not deposit it yet. Read this first.

If you have been paying rent on the same space for years, at some point the math tips toward owning it.

If the plan is for you to keep the house, there are usually two jobs to do at once. Get the loan into your name alone, and pay your former spouse their share of the equity.

When people tell me they do not have enough to retire, I ask one question. Did you count the house?

The couples who buy their first home without the panic are the ones who made a plan in the first year, not the ones who started looking the week they got tired of renting.

I own a photography studio, an insurance agency and a software company. I have had a lender look at my Schedule C like it was written in another language.

This is the most common thing I untangle after a divorce, so I am going to say it plainly. The deed is title. The loan is the loan. Both need handling.

Most of the people I meet who are close to retirement have more wealth in their house than in their 401K. Here is how a reverse mortgage can put that to work while you stay right where you are.