5 Financial Experts Who Get Reverse Mortgages Right (And 5 Who Are Still Stuck in the Past)

If you work with senior homeowners, you have heard the warnings from financial experts: Reverse mortgages are “a scam.” They are “predatory.” Some of the most famous names in personal finance repeat these lines every year, even though the program they are describing changed years ago.

Here’s the problem for you as a professional. Your clients hear these voices on podcasts, read their columns, and quote them right back to you when you bring up a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) as a planning tool. If you do not know what these financial experts actually say and where they get it wrong, you can’t help your client separate old myths from current facts.

So let’s look at five podcast, radio, and TV personalities who understand today’s HECM program, and five still describing a reverse mortgage that hasn’t existed since HUD’s reforms in the early- to mid-2010s. None of the five critics are dishonest, and none are wrong about everything. The problem is that some of their most quoted lines describe a loan that has not existed for over a decade, and your clients do not know the difference.

Financial Experts Still Stuck in the Past

1. Dave Ramsey

Dave Ramsey is probably the loudest reverse mortgage critic in the country, and he has not softened his language over the years. He has called reverse mortgages a “rip-off,” “predatory,” and something that puts your “dream retirement” at risk.

Here is what this best known if not uncontroversial of financial experts leaves out. Since 2015, every HECM borrower must pass a Financial Assessment that checks whether they can afford ongoing property taxes and insurance, and HUD can require a set-aside from the loan proceeds if there is any doubt. The loan is also non-recourse, meaning neither the borrower nor their heirs will ever owe more than the home is worth, a protection backed by the Federal Housing Administration. Calling a federally insured, counselor-required loan a “scam” ignores twenty years of consumer protection reform.

2. Suze Orman

Suze Orman has softened slightly over the years, but her go-to advice is still to treat a reverse mortgage as a last resort, something you consider only after every other option is gone. She often illustrates her caution with stories from borrowers who ran into trouble, but many predate the 2015 safeguards.

The research has moved past “last resort” thinking. Retirement researchers now show that opening a HECM line of credit early, even while a homeowner has other assets, can extend the life of a portfolio and reduce the risk of running out of money later. Treating it as a last resort can mean waiting until the loan becomes less useful.

3. Clark Howard

A highly respected voice among this list of financial experts, Clark Howard has warned his radio and podcast audience for two decades that the reverse mortgage market is full of “snakes in the grass.” He is not entirely wrong that the industry has had bad actors, and fees do deserve scrutiny, but his warnings often lean on outdated horror stories rather than the program as it exists today. To his credit, Howard has also called reverse mortgages a “least-bad choice” for the right borrower in more recent interviews. Still, his public messaging skews so heavily toward suspicion that many of his longtime listeners never hear that nuance.

4. Michelle Singletary

One of my favorite financial experts, Michelle has long worked as the Washington Post’s personal finance columnist. Generally, she has taken a “proceed with caution” tone, fair advice for almost any financial product. Her most detailed writing on the topic dates back to 2014, before the Financial Assessment rule and other protections took effect. She accurately cited a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau report on tax and insurance defaults from that era, but that data reflects the old program, not the one your clients would use today.

5. George Kamel (The Ramsey Show)

As Dave Ramsey’s on-air successor, George Kamel has carried the same all-debt-is-bad framework to a new generation of listeners. He and Ramsey treat a reverse mortgage the same way they treat a credit card balance or a car loan: debt to avoid, full stop. That framework works well for getting a young family out of consumer debt. It works poorly for a mortgage-free retiree trying to responsibly convert home equity into cash flow, a very different situation with very different math.

Financial Experts Getting It Right

1. Terry Savage

Syndicated financial columnist Terry Savage has been one of the most consistent voices among financial experts in favor of reverse mortgages done correctly. She has written openly about arranging a HECM for her own father, who lived in his home into his nineties because of it. Her columns walk through real costs, like the origination fee and interest rate margin, and she always tells readers to get independent HUD counseling first. She sums up her view simply: a reverse mortgage can be “a life-saving strategy for staying in your home,” but only when the borrower understands the structure and can handle the ongoing costs.

2. Wade Pfau, Ph.D., CFA

Wade Pfau is a professor of retirement income and one of the only reverse mortgage authors who has never worked in the industry. After digging into the research starting in 2014, he concluded that reverse mortgages had earned an unfair reputation. His work shows that coordinating a HECM line of credit with a portfolio can reduce sequence-of-returns risk, the danger of withdrawing from investments during a market downturn early in retirement. His book on the subject is used as a reference across the financial planning profession.

3. Jean Chatzky

As AARP’s Financial Ambassador and host of the HerMoney podcast, Jean Chatzky gives a straight, modern answer when readers ask about reverse mortgages. I’ve admired her among financial experts for years. She explains that a HECM line of credit is often “the smartest structure” for someone planning to stay long term, while staying honest that upfront costs are real and that borrowers need to compare options carefully. That balance, useful without pretending there is no downside, is exactly what your clients need to hear.

4. Christine Benz (Morningstar)

Christine Benz, Morningstar’s director of personal finance and retirement planning, has pointed to home equity as an “under-discussed” resource for funding long-term care. She has discussed reverse mortgages as one legitimate way to tap that equity, especially compared to a married couple having to spend down assets to qualify for Medicaid. Her audience trusts her because she rarely oversells any single product, which makes her willingness to include reverse mortgages meaningful.

5. The National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association’s Academic Allies

This last spot goes to a growing group not of popular financial experts but of independent academics and researchers, including economists writing in the Journal of Financial Planning, who have studied the modern HECM program on its own terms. Their consistent finding is that a reverse mortgage, used as part of a coordinated plan rather than sold in isolation, can support a more stable retirement. That is a very different conclusion than “avoid at all costs,” and it is backed by data instead of a soundbite.

The Big Gap: Almost Financial Experts Talk about the HECM for Purchase

Here’s something I noticed while researching this list. I could be wrong (and that wouldn’t surprise me but would actually delight me in this case), but not one of the ten voices above, not the critics and not the ones who get it right, talks specifically about the HECM for Purchase (H4P).

A caller on Dave Ramsey’s show who brings up a reverse mortgage is almost always asking about a loan a parent already has, not about buying a new home. Other financial experts, including Suze Orman, Clark Howard, and Michelle Singletary all refer to the standard HECM when they weigh in, the one that lets a homeowner tap equity in a home they already own.

Even the financial experts getting it right, like Wade Pfau, Jean Chatzky, and Terry Savage, write mostly about coordinating a HECM line of credit with a portfolio or staying put in a current home. None of them spend much time on the version that lets a senior sell one home and buy the next in a single transaction, with a down payment instead of a mortgage payment.

That silence among financial experts is worth noticing. The H4P is the one reverse mortgage product that actually creates a real estate transaction. It can help a downsizing senior buy a home closer to family, easier to maintain, or better suited for aging in place, often with more buying power and less cash out of pocket than an all-cash purchase would allow. Yet the loudest voices in personal finance rarely say its name.

That gap is an opportunity for you. If your clients have never heard a trusted personality explain how H4P works, you are often the first to introduce it. That makes your explanation carry more weight, but it also means you cannot lean on “well, even Suze Orman says…” the way you can with the standard HECM. You have to make the case yourself, with the facts and a referral to a HUD-approved counselor.

Why This Matters for Your Business

Your clients are not going to stop watching Dave Ramsey or reading Suze Orman’s advice. What they need is someone who can explain why some of that advice has not kept up with a program HUD substantially reformed years ago, and who can fill in what none of these voices cover at all.

If you are a real estate agent, a senior client who wants to downsize has probably heard Dave Ramsey’s warnings, but almost certainly has never heard anyone explain H4P. If you cannot address the objection and explain the option in the same conversation, you may lose that sale to an agent who can.

If you are a financial planner, counselor, or estate planning attorney, your clients ask a different set of questions: a shrinking portfolio, long-term care costs, or how to help an aging parent stay independent without spending down assets for Medicaid. Wade Pfau and Christine Benz both point to the same conclusion: home equity is a resource, not something to ignore until every other account is empty.

Knowing the difference between outdated criticism and current research is not just good client service. It separates a professional your clients trust from one who repeats whatever they last heard on the radio. Your senior clients deserve advice based on the program as it exists now, including the one product almost nobody on the radio ever mentions.

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This post was written by the founder of HECMCoach.com, a HUD-certified and HECM-certified housing counselor and Accredited Financial Counselor (AFC) through AFCPE. The information in this post is educational and does not constitute financial or legal advice nor does it represent the views of the writer’s employer. Readers should consult a licensed mortgage professional and a HUD-approved housing counselor with a HUD-approved housing counseling agency for guidance specific to their situation.