It’s not surprising to hear that retirees are adding debt faster than any other age group. It used to be that the house was paid off by the time you quit work and medical costs in your golden years were far less onerous than today. While health care is surely better now than in decades past, it’s also far more expensive and has forced many retirees to borrow against the house, take out a reverse mortgage, or rack up credit card debt.

These issues are touched on in this CNN/Money story based on a new study of the subject.

It used to be that many Americans entered retirement having paid off their mortgages and most of their other debts. This should have been senior citizens’ Golden Years.

Nowadays, more and more people over the age of 65 are struggling with mounting debt levels, fueled primarily by mortgages and credit cards. The average debt held by senior citizens has ballooned to $50,000 in 2010, up 83% since 2001, according to Federal Reserve data crunched by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
…
Only 24% of homeowners over the age of 62 had mortgage debt in 1992, but that figure soared to 45% in 2010.

Credit card debt has also become more pervasive among seniors. One-third of them are relying on plastic to cover basic living expenses, according to Demos, a public policy organization that advocates for lower- and middle-income Americans.

Presumably, reverse mortgages are included in the figures cited above. Otherwise, they’d be far higher and, based on anecdotal accounts I’ve heard in recent years, reverse mortgage probably account for the bulk of the new debt.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing that reverse mortgages are the only recourse for many elderly since it’s better than having no options at all, but it’s a sad testament to our current condition when you have to, basically, sell your house in order to survive.