What are American homeowners worried about?

Are fears real or imagined?

Mortgage Professional America reached out to Chris Moschner (pictured), chief marketing officer at Finance of America, for a deeper dive into the survey’s findings. MPA started by asking: Is the collective level of high anxiety based on reality? Or are worries prompted by imagined threats?

“Perception to some extent is reality,” Moschner began. “A lot of people are being influenced by a lot of different factors. Inflation is the obvious culprit. The funny thing is, when people think of inflation abating over the past year, it doesn’t mean it’s going back to where it was. It just means it’s not going up as fast anymore.”

Whether threats to financial security are real or imagined, Moschner agreed homeowners’ sense of collective anxiety is a valid response to the mercurial times. Yet it’s when inflation hits the pocketbooks that the issue becomes all too real: “The problem is that prices have gone up, so budgets are still crimped,” he said. “I would say to that extent it’s still very real – especially for a lot of the customers we serve – 55, 62 and older. Some of those folks, as they get into their 60s and 70s, are on a fixed income. So the revenue side of their monthly budget hasn’t changed, and yet the expense side has gone up – and continues to go up. Even though it’s gotten better, it’s still rising.”

Survey reveals anxiety on several fronts

The US inflation rate currently stands at 3.18% compared to 2.97% last month and 8.52% last year, as tracked by YCharts. The rate is lower than the long-term average of 3.28%. As YCharts succinctly explains, the inflation rate is the percentage in which a chosen basket of goods and services purchased increases in price over a year.

And lately, that basket ain’t no horn of plenty, as perceived by respondents to the survey, the second such sampling taken annually by Finance of America Reverse. Among other key findings: 41% of surveyed homeowners derive anxiety about their discretionary spending, such as buying a new car or taking a vacation. The percentage is up from 32% last year. Concerns about long-term financial matters are greatest among women – with 82% anxious about the economy, compared to 73% of men. And 54% are anxious about retiring on their terms, compared to 46% of men.