Cash is King + Mortgage Forbearance Options in the CARES Act

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April 6th 2020

By Matt Miner

First, I hope you and the people you love are well as we slog though the Covid-19 pandemic. Here at our house, we’re trying to embrace the good parts about being together, get lots of exercise outside, and make progress on our daily work, yard, and house.

On Friday I released a video about conserving cash if your income is under pressure. It arose because of client inquiries, as well as Wall Street Journal reportage. This is the companion article.

Now is a good time to accumulate some cash. If your income is not reduced, cash should be accumulating automatically because there’s almost nothing you can go spend money on! This is why the economy is shrinking rapidly.

If you anticipate reduced income, here are some tactics to accumulate even more cash.

For federal student loan borrowers, take advantage of the government-offered deferral on your student loans until your earning situation becomes clear. Contact your loan servicer to exercise this option.

If you have debts you’re paying extra on, now might be a good time to press pause on those extra payments.

If you don’t forfeit an employer match, you might consider stopping contributions to your 401(k) or other retirement plan. You can always “make up” these contributions later in 2020 and still get the tax benefit. If ceasing contributions results in losing matching dollars entirely, you need to weight this carefully. Match dollars are compensation and losing comp is never fun!

This article was prompted specifically by client inquiries regarding mortgage relief in the CARES Act and two WSJ articles (paywall alert): “Struggling Borrowers Want To Pause Their Mortgage Payments. It Hasn’t Been Easy” and “How to Suspend Your Mortgage Payments During Coronavirus Turmoil“.

If you read those articles, you’ll see that even the people charged with implementing this legislation (FHA along with Fannie & Freddy) are going about it in different ways!

What we know:

The CARES Act seeks to provide relief for the 70% borrowers with mortgages owned or insured by the federal government or a federal agency if these debtors experience financial hardship because of the pandemic.

If your mortgage is eligible – a Federally Backed Mortgage under CARES Act (call your servicer and ask), you must make the request before the President rescinds the National Emergency declared on March 13th, 2020. Your servicer should have more information for you.

What we don’t know:

We don’t know how your lender will treat the payments. Will they be put on the end of the loan or will you owe a lump-sum payment at the end of the forbearance period? Different servicers answer this question differently. In the first case, you’re extending the time you pay your mortgage loan. In the second case, you’ll need to come up with a large sum of cash when the forbearance ends.

It is unclear whether you be subject to compound interest – interest on interest. Your servicer may tell you how they are handling this. When I reviewed the legislation, I could not find a clear answer to this question.

Here’s a quote in the WSJ from David Stevens, a former head of the Federal Housing Administration. “The messaging has not matched what’s established in policy yet. The confusion level is extremely high.” No surprise then that the rest of us are still figuring this out!

The article continues, “The Department of Housing and Urban Development sought to clear up some of the confusion this week, telling servicers they can compile the missed payments into a second, interest-free home loan for the borrower to pay off after the original mortgage. The guidelines apply to FHA insured mortgages, which make up about 15% of all active mortgages in the U.S. The federal regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance companies that back about half of the U.S. mortgage market, has instructed servicers to work with borrowers and to consider letting them tack their missed payments on to the end of their loan.”

Servicers Will Struggle to Help

As a savvy planner, you should know that mortgage forbearance sets up an existential conflict between mortgage debtors and mortgage servicers. Mortgage servicers are middlemen who handle payment processing, account reporting, and customer service for the owners of the mortgage. Servicers are required to keep making payments to the mortgage owners – even though their debtors are permitted to stop making payments to the servicer! This conflict means I don’t expect servicers to move especially fast to implement this relief – since it may doom their businesses!

Until the servicers can get their hands in the government cookie jar too….er, receive some relief from congress, my expectation is that they will slow-walk this process because the CARES legislation puts them in a completely untenable position from a cash standpoint.

My general financial planning recommendation about the mortgage relief provision in the CARES act is to steer clear unless your circumstances are dire. Here’s why:

1. You’ll spend time dealing with the mortgage company, and need to jump through whatever hoops are necessary

2. I am concerned they will mess it up, resulting in damage to your credit report. You will be able to repair these problems, but this result will require further effort on your part. I’m not saying this will happen. I’m just saying I don’t have confidence that it won’t happen.

3. No matter how the lender handles the missed payment, taking this route represent cash-flow relief at the expense of your wealth, since you’ll pay more interest over time – it amounts to increasing borrowing on your home. Mortgage forbearance may be better than credit cards or a family loan. But debt is my least favorite way to raise cash.

Pursuing the Mortgage Forbearance Option

If the mortgage forbearance provisions of the CARES act may still help your family, here is a potential tactic. Arrange a six month forbearance, and then at around the four-month mark, refinance your entire mortgage into a new note. This could buy you some time for your income to return to a more normal state. I don’t prefer this approach because it is contingent on three things you cannot directly control.

First, the mortgage you want will have to be available; if that caveat sounds dire, look at the economic carnage we’re experiencing right now.

Second, you need to have adequate income to acquire the new mortgage.

Third, you need to have adequate credit to qualify for the new mortgage.

Because no one knows the future and none of these things are directly under your control, in poker terms, this is a planning tactic for betting on the come. It’s not the type of conservative advice I prefer.

Finally, all this highlights the importance of your hefty-duty emergency fund. Warren Buffet has a gift for memorable language. He says, “When the tide goes out, you can tell who was skinny dipping.”

If this crisis exposed the need for more cash in your life, decide now that that will never happen again.

Matt Miner interview on Episode 81 of The Military Money Show with Lacey Langford

We are excited to share our recent collaboration with Lacey Langford, the Military Money Expert. Our goal is to help bring personal finance education to the military community.

You can listen to the first of three episodes here.

To all current and former military members and their families: Thank you for your service.

For everyone who listens, we hope you enjoy the show.

The PLC Wealth Team – Josh, Mike, Sandra, & Matt

What will you accomplish in 2020? It starts with your values

December 19, 2019

By Matt Miner

Sometimes the past knocks on your door and reminds you to plan for your future.

The first story

Ben, our third child, was born during my second year of MBA studies at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Ben first showed his face at the end of fall break. I returned to Fuqua on a Thursday, four days into the new Fall 2 term.

My leadership and management instructor, Joe LeBoeuf kicked off the class and then asked Team Fuqua to give me a round of applause as a new dad. He invited me to come up front. Joe presented me with an inscribed copy of Goodnight, Moon, congratulated me on the arrival of our third child, and encouraged me to read aloud to our children (which I still do, though they’re now 14, 12, and 11).

I could piece together the rest of my schedule that term from emails, or review my transcript. But I can’t name from memory any of my other instructors that fall; I can tell you about Joe LeBoeuf.

The second story

Lacey Langford is a Triad-based podcaster I know. She creates a weekly show called The Military Money Expert and has some terrific guests – I particularly recommend the interviews with Robert Frick and JD Roth.

As I scrolled through Lacey’s podcast feed, I got excited when I saw the interview with retired Brigadier General Maureen LeBoeuf. I knew Maureen was Joe LeBoeuf’s wife. I tuned in to the episode.

Maureen shares a bit of her story, but the most compelling part of the interview is when Lacey urges Maureen to talk about her leadership philosophy. This discussion held my attention because I am updating a family document (first crafted in 2015 and last updated in 2017) called the “Miner Family Vision, Values, and Goals.” It’s our family philosophy. Maureen tells Lacey:

[Your leadership philosophy] helps the people you are going to lead understand your point of view as a leader…it’s what they can expect from you. And it’s also an opportunity to let those you lead know what you’re going to expect of them.

The first thing is to think about your values…then you take those values and define them…People think, ‘I’ve got values.’ But they never sit down and do the deep dive into, ‘What are my values?’ and then the next step, ‘How do I define those values.’ And then when you share them…you need to live them, because people are going to see if you walk the talk.”

Maureen would not have achieved the same level of leadership and career success without carefully considering and then writing down her leadership philosophy. And while Maureen’s remarks are focused on leadership, the same thought process applies to your life and money.

What is real financial planning?

You need a point of view on your life – this is derived from your values. Then your values guide what you’re doing with the time, energy, talents, and money you have. If what you’re actually doing with your life differs from what you say you value, this is an opportunity to reflect whether your values are real values, or whether you should bring your efforts into greater alignment with what’s most important to you.

Ask yourself what you’d like your life to look and feel like in 1, 3, 5 or 10 years. That’s your vision.

Ask yourself what’s most important to you. These are your values. They shape how you use your time and money – and your use of time and money signal what you value.

Ask yourself what you need to have or do. These are your goals. Then, for each of your goals you create action steps that move you in the direction of the goal.

Ask yourself what you already have that you’re thankful for. This gets you in the right headspace to tackle a project like this.

And do it now. Completing this task before your new year begins is potent. You can always improve your document later. For any commitment of time or money you can ask whether it supports your vision of your life, whether it’s in harmony with your values, and whether it moves you closer or farther away from hitting your goals.

If this sounds overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. Just a few sentences on each of these questions can be helpful in setting a course.

And this is the task we help clients accomplish, all day, every day.

The benefit of this exercise is in thinking it through and writing it down – not in accomplishing all your plans exactly as you imagined. That won’t happen. General Eisenhower said, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

In Maureen’s context, her Army bosses provided powerful encouragement by requiring that she write down her leadership philosophy, share it with others, and hold herself accountable as part of her job.

In your context, working with an advisor, mentor, or coach can be a great way to write things down and build the momentum you need to hit the ground running and make real progress on your goals in 2020.

Additional Resources

Links to a three-part series on goal setting from my friend Joshua Sheats of Radical Personal Finance.

  1. Dream and Count the Cost of your Goals
  2. Goals: How and Why
  3. Goals: Count the Cost

Home is where the __________ is. 1.) Heart or 2.) Hassle?

June 17, 2019

Matt Miner

Over the weekend I received a thoughtful note from a client about renting versus owning.

Our client asked what we thought about the possibility of renting throughout one’s entire life, and taking the money that would be used for a large house down payment (in this case, a 100% down payment) and investing it as we recommend. I wanted to share my reply below:

 

Dear N_________,

It’s always great to hear from you!

First, there’s nothing wrong with renting for the rest of your life as long as this is part of your plan, and you do it eyes-wide open. Like anything, it is just a whole lot better if it’s intentional. This is how you’re approaching it, so well done!

In your mail you mention that owning a home means you have to pay taxes on it and maintain it for the rest of your life. This is true, but renting just means you pay someone else to do this for you.

You are correct that you could probably invest the money you’re putting into this house and get enough return to continue renting throughout your life. We can model this with some assumptions if you’d like.

Whether renting forever is scary just depends on your planning. We can share with you that according to Tom Stanley, (author of The Millionaire Next Door and other data-driven books about the wealthy), 95 – 97% of wealthy people choose to own their own home with these type of ratios:

1.) 10% – 25% of their net worth tied up in the house

2.) A mortgage balance between Zero-times and Three-times annual income (not more)

For a family earning $120,000 per year, with a net worth of $350,000 that WANTED to own, these could be reasonable numbers:

  • $360,000 purchase price
  • $72,000 down (< 25% of total net-worth tied up in the house)
  • $288,000 mortgage balance (< 3X annual income)
  • All-in monthly / annual payment of $2300 / $27,600

The family in this case should have enough money to build wealth. Even though the bank may be happy to approve their application (!) a $500,000 house is too expensive for this family. As our friend Tom Stanley says, asking the bank how much you should borrow is like asking a fox to count the chickens in your henhouse.  On the other hand, a $275,000 house will allow them to become wealthier faster, or to support other goals along the way, such as travel, children’s education, or giving.

For a family in retirement with a net worth of $1.7M, having a paid-for $360,000 house would be totally reasonable; this is less than 25% of their total net worth.  For this retired family, a $700,000 house is too much. The home will make it difficult for their other assets to support their lifestyle.

On the positive side, when you own a home, what you get is some protection from long-term inflation for part of your housing budget, and you get a portion of your portfolio returning a very predictable amount once you own it in cash: You save the principal and interest portion of your mortgage payment.

As you can see from the ratios above, we don’t recommend putting 100% or even 50% of your net worth into a house.  On the other hand, copying what wealthy people do in terms of habits and ratios is usually a good idea too!

Conceptually, when you rent, this is what you pay:

Rental Price

  1. Landlord’s Cost of Capital on the home itself
  2. PLUS Landlord’s Profit
  3. PLUS Landlord’s Real Estate Taxes & Insurance
  4. PLUS Landlord’s Maintenance and Repair Costs
  5. MINUS Tax Benefits that may accrue to the Landlord (deductibility of repair expense, interest expense & depreciation, possibly at a higher tax rate than your own)

When you own, this is what you pay:

Home Ownership Price

  1. Your cost of capital on the home itself
  2. PLUS Your Real Estate Taxes & Insurance
  3. PLUS Your Maintenance and Repair Costs
  4. MINUS Tax Benefits that may accrue to you (for middle-income tax payers, the TCJA has made this less likely given a much higher standard deduction)

Just looking at that formula lets you know that for an equivalent house, all else equal, by owning you will save the Landlord’s Profit component MINUS any tax benefits that may be greater for the Landlord than they are for you (you may or may not be able to deduct your interest and real estate taxes each year, and you cannot deduct repairs or depreciation as an owner-occupant).

Rather than reinvent the wheel with a bunch of calculations, please check out this excellent article, and then let me know if you want to go deeper on any of this. In a lot of ways, it all comes down to preference and then putting the right plan in place for you.

 https://affordanything.com/is-renting-better-than-buying-should-i-rent-or-buy/

We wish you all the best!

Matt