Structuring the reverse mortgage as a loan with the terms "you never make any payments, and no matter how much the face value of the loan reaches, you will never owe anything other than your house, whatever its value may be at the time of settlement" is a way to let the estate of someone who dies quickly keep ownership, but still pretty obviously a sale rather than a loan, in the same way that Islam-compliant financing is fundamentally still a loan rather than whatever they label it to avoid the Koranic prohibition on things being called "loans".
I'll accept the correction on target retirement funds, but I still think "lose your principal preemptively now to avoid it possibly losing value later" is a misguided approach. The only justification offered for these funds is that you want to pull out of the stock market, with its volatility, before you die, so that you can enjoy spending your money (in my model) or lower returns (in yours). Assuming you have any family members, the point of doing so disappears -- you can't realize the future growth in your crashed stock portfolio after you die, but they can. All the same reasons you want stocks when you're 20 and don't have children suddenly apply again when you're 80 and do.
I will note that kelnos's sibling response to yours takes the same view I've been taking - that the point of a target retirement fund is that you withdraw the money so you can spend it:
> You don't want to be 85 and have to do a major withdrawal due to illness right when the stock market is experiencing a periodic down-swing
I'll accept the correction on target retirement funds, but I still think "lose your principal preemptively now to avoid it possibly losing value later" is a misguided approach. The only justification offered for these funds is that you want to pull out of the stock market, with its volatility, before you die, so that you can enjoy spending your money (in my model) or lower returns (in yours). Assuming you have any family members, the point of doing so disappears -- you can't realize the future growth in your crashed stock portfolio after you die, but they can. All the same reasons you want stocks when you're 20 and don't have children suddenly apply again when you're 80 and do.
I will note that kelnos's sibling response to yours takes the same view I've been taking - that the point of a target retirement fund is that you withdraw the money so you can spend it:
> You don't want to be 85 and have to do a major withdrawal due to illness right when the stock market is experiencing a periodic down-swing