You think life goes on the way it has forever. Hope and John Scott had made a lovely home and marriage in Lakewood, Calif., anchored by John’s 42 years of employment for a major supermarket chain. Hope kept the house up and worked occasional jobs for extra income.
Like so many Southern Californians, upon retirement they wanted to move to a place less hectic and closer to nature. They found their perfect retirement haven in West Virginia, within seven miles of the Mountaineer state’s famous New River Gorge, a 73,000-acre wonderland of world-class rock-climbing and river paddling.
Life was good, filled with John’s favorite pursuits, like venison and squirrel-hunting. Hope loved picking wild blueberries. “I had never seen a blueberry bush until I moved to West Virginia,” Hope said.
Hope and John took to West Virginia like beavers to water, often wondering why they hadn’t moved there earlier. Hope admitted that she might have been born a city girl, but she was “country” at heart.
Then John got sick and eventually passed. They had been married 38 years.
Soon, Hope had to face challenges of her own, including grief, cancer, and an income cut in half after John’s passing. She cut back, took odd jobs, and occasionally received help from neighbors when things got tight. She was barely scraping by, with little to look forward to.
She and John had once considered a reverse mortgage to supplement their retirement income, but now she was ready to take another look. She met AAG loan officer John Wuchte, who treated her with kindness and found the financial solution for her.
“John was absolutely phenomenal, more of a friend than anything else,” said Hope. “He was caring and incredibly nice, and I thoroughly recommend him to everyone.”
With her new reverse mortgage loan line of credit, Hope paid off some large bills and put the rest in the bank, creating a combined emergency and home maintenance fund for some home projects she wants to tackle when the weather warms.
Like the nearby river, Hope is again flowing with life and optimism. The blueberries she loves so much might even taste a little sweeter this spring. To find out if a reverse mortgage loan is right for you, click here.
AAG/American Advisors Group are divisions of Finance of America Reverse LLC which is licensed nationwide | Equal Housing Opportunity | NMLS ID # 2285 (www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org) | 8023 East 63rd Place, Suite 700 | Tulsa, OK 74133
