Mandelman Matters

How Pickleball Saved Me

Black History Month is Something All Americans Should Celebrate

The HECM Line of Credit: It Should be Called the "Retirement Mortgage"

Older Homeowners Should Avoid a HELOC. Better Options Exist.

Why Doesn’t Every Homeowner Over Age 62 Do This?

COVID-19: How we got here and what we need to do next.

The Real Reason Trump Lost in 2020

My Father's Many Gifts, and Mom Let Him Live

Homeowners are Happy About Higher Home Values. So Are Debt Collectors.

The Forbearance Bait & Switch

Tax Reduction Strategies Using the HECM

Jim and Martin talk about tax advantages and tax planning specifically relating to HECM which is the acronym for the Government's federally insured mortgage program called the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage. The guest on today's show explains HECM in more detail he has experience in many different kinds of tax work. Jim explains if the HECM mortgage interest is taxable and how to navigate that when leaving a HECM mortgage to your heirs.   Jim answers common questions such as wh...

Forbearance crisis coming to the US?

There are a growing number of publications telling consumers to expect a wave of foreclosures. There are estimated in January that 2.1 billion loans went into forbearance. They also estimate the first wave of forbearance ending loans will hit in June/July.  This applies to all federally approved mortgage loans through the end of this year. What will happen as some 2 million-plus of loans in forbearance modification are coming to the end of their forbearance? The easiest thing ...

Trump v. Biden on Immigration

One of the fundamental differences between the Trump and Biden administrations is immigration was viewed as a bad thing under Trump, and Biden views immigration as a good thing. This is the fundamental difference. Immigration status has been a confusing and complex topic since the Obama administration. People would come into the country, assimilate, and never come to the migration hearing. This was often because their hearing would be where they entered the country, and the person...

Here we go again with Jay Patterson

Jay Patterson is a nationally recognized forensic accountant and Certified Fraud Examiner.  He is the owner of Full Disclosure LLC since 2007.  His practice is limited to forensic and investigative accounting/auditing relating to mortgage loan servicing functions, processes, and document forensics.   Jay has specialized knowledge in these areas and has testified as an expert witness in a variety of jurisdictions, including state courts, federal courts, and legislative bodies.  He h...

Media Bias in America

My guest today is David Andelman. Yes, he's a cousin. Yes, he's a relative. However, that's not why he's here. David is a veteran correspondent, author, and commentator. He contributes frequently to CNN on global affairs. He writes a column every week. He's a member of the board of contributors of USA today. And for more than seven years, he was the editor and publisher of the world policy journal. He was also editor executive editor at Forbes, he's been a domestic and foreign corr...

WTF is happening in Syria?

David also has a 12 part podcast series called A Red Line in the Sand which is fantastic. David shares from his extensive experience as a journalist his perspective on the state of the news and the coverage of the Syrian Civil War, unpacking its complicated history and context to the conflict. The Assad family has ruled Syria for close to half a century now. It hasn't been a "wonderful" rule. They've been concerned about enriching their own family and securing power.  When you tal...

The Return of House calls with Gelena Lifchitz

Gelena Lifchitz MD Ph.D., MPH is the founder of Teal Heal where they believe that home is the best place to heal. A new level of technology-enabled house calls for the 21st century.

In-Home COVID Vaccinations with Dr. Lifchitz

Health care is a topic discussed at the dinner table all over the world due to the pandemic. We talk about Gelena's thoughts on when we will likely start to get back to a sense of normalcy because of immunity. There are many obstacles: people are fearful of the vaccine because it's a new technology and there is not much data on the long-term effects.  She believes that because people are fearful we will have a hard time getting vaccinations fast enough. The doctor with his "black...

Cut debt without bankruptcy? Maybe you can

DebtCleanse™ was founded by Jorge P. Newbery, a successful entrepreneur who lost everything to a freak act of nature and found himself $26 million in debt. Jorge fought back and is now debt-free. The DebtCleanse™ system was built around the strategies Jorge learned and developed in the process of eliminating his own debt. Jorge found his way out of massive debt by finding errors that his creditors made and exploiting those mistakes to get reduced payments or settlements. They are a...

Cut debt without bankruptcy... Maybe you can

Debt. We all have it. We have $14.3 Trillion with a "T" of consumer debt in the first three months of 2021. We talk with an expert on debt who has some great news for anyone else who finds themselves enslaved to a debtor.

University Professors Research Reverse Mortgages, Set Record Straight

Why are reverse mortgages misunderstood? I think it's largely because of how the industry has marketed and advertised them… as a product older people get when they need money to cover living expenses during retirement.   So, it would stand to reason that all of the people that do not yet need money to cover their living expenses, would ignore reverse mortgages completely… which is exactly what they do for the most part. The media’s coverage of reverse mortgages has been terribly slanted, b...

Exceptional Insight of Barry Sacks, Esq. on Reverse Mortgages

My guest, Barry Sacks, has spent 35 years as an ERISA attorney, a lawyer who specializes in qualified retirement plans… helping people save enough for retirement and then helping them structure income during retirement. A few years ago he discovered a role for a reverse mortgage that no one had ever considered before… he used it to make a retirement portfolio last longer. So, he published his findings in professional journals and went on the lecture circuit speaking in front of fin...

Are you considering bankruptcy? What should you be doing now?

We're recording this at the beginning of February 2021, and we're in a deep hole. We've got still have 5 million people that are in what they're calling a forbearance, meaning they're not making mortgage payments. Another million people who think they're in forbearance, but aren't because they never had a conversation with their mortgage company. It just looks like it's going to end badly. Marc points out that there is a lot you can do to avoid bankruptcy. If you visit a bankruptcy...

What to do if you're having trouble with your mortgage servicer

Nick Wooten is the founder of Nick Wooten, LLC. Nick has been a licensed attorney since May of 1998. Nick has spent the vast majority of his career representing consumers in all types of civil litigation relating to consumer issues, personal injury and wrongful death claims since 1998. Currently, Nick is focusing on litigation against mortgage servicers in the Eastern Division of the Northern District of Illinois which includes Chicago and its suburbs. Nick is admitted as a member o...

Pre-Bankruptcy conversation with Tim McFarlin

Timothy G. McFarlin is an attorney at McFarlin LLP who practices many areas of law, including real estate law, debt reorganization, bankruptcy, business litigation, consumer law, and mortgage litigation. Clients range from individual consumers to large national corporations. Bankruptcy is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a financial tool.  Tim shares that bankruptcy is actually something that started in the Bible. In the Bible debts would be forgiven every seven years, called the y...

David Andelman - Trump, $.55, and voter fraud

David Andelman is a graduate of Harvard College and of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Andelman was the editor of World Policy Journal from 2008 until 2015. Previously, he served as an executive editor at  Forbes.com, as business editor of New York Daily News, as a Washington correspondent for CNBC, and as a reporter, correspondent and bureau chief for The New York Times in covering Southeast Asia from his base in Bangkok, Eastern Europe from his base in Belgr...

Tom Cox on Forbearance

Meet Thomas Cox, Esquire. A National Hero in Foreclosure Defense Frankly, I thought everyone already knew that, but apparently not.  So, if you aren’t already familiar with what Tom has done and continues to do for homeowners, take a look below… click PLAY on a few videos… read what the New York Times, Huffington Post, the American Bar Association… and others have to say… and see for yourself. Watch Tom testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee… see him awarded the $100,00...

A real story of a business and homeowner from the Bay Area

My guest, Ali, has had a successful technology-related business in the Bay Area for 28. In March of this year they were forced to stop operation and close their offices. They've worked hard not to let anyone go and have not had to yet, but it took enlisting their savings and the PPP load to continue to make payroll and keep their staff. But now that it has run ou they don't have much left or many options. They are struggling to keep their company going. Right now they expect no fu...

Nick Wooten on the economic meltdown

If you've ever wanted to look behind the curtain of the mortgage company, we talk with Nick Wooten who is an expert in the inner workings of these companies. From Nick's website: Many homeowners get behind on their mortgage payments. This can lead to foreclosure and the loss of your home. In order to prevent foreclosure, many homeowners enter into a loan modification with the mortgage servicer. Mortgage servicers present this as a helpful option that can lower monthly mortgage pay...

The HECM program, debunking the myths about the reverse mortgage

"I think nobody in Washington or in New York or any part of the United States really knows how bad the economy is because we don't know when we're going to come back out of the shutdown and people are going to go back to work back to school. Right now the economy is as bad as anything I've seen in my lifetime, of course, and not since the great depression that we had numbers as bad." _ Rubinstein That's not what you'd be hearing on CNN right now. They are talking about how the reco...

A realistic view of the economy

The Cares Act, the act that they passed in Congress for $2.6 trillion back in April, the idea was it was going to provide the support the economy needed to get through this shutdown. The Cares Act was done during a time where we all thought we needed a bandaid. Things like the $600 per week people got during unemployment has run out. People have also been granted forbearances in April so they didn't have to make their home mortgage. But those are getting to their end. Let's be hone...

Max Gardener on the Collapse of the Economy

Why is not one talking about the meltdown of our economy in 2020? It seemed to take a good year for the mainstream media to pick up on what was really happening during the 2008 foreclosure crisis. Maybe the lack of coverage is business as usual. Max comments on how the stock market doesn't make any sense to him right now. The only explanation he can think of is that the federal reserve bank of New York has put trillions of dollars into the system since September 17th of 2019. Back...

Mandelman Matters Trailer

I've spent about 30 years as a consultant to big business, accounting, insurance, financial services, law, and health care. Over that time, I was exposed to lots of subject matter. My specialty is making difficult subjects easy to understand. And, people say I'm funny occasionally. I started my blog and this podcast back before the meltdown of 2008. It took the mainstream media a couple of years to follow suit, but you don't want to wait. I will have the guests that know what they'...