As the housing market began to slide three years ago, my wife and that i began to sense that we were losing our other options. As people lose the value they always believed they been on their homes, their options in their ability to qualify for loans begin to freeze up insanely. The worst part for us was, individuals were in the real estate business, and we saw our incomes start seriously drop. We never imagined we'd have collection agencies calling, but call, they did. Within end, we for you to pick one of two options - we could file for bankruptcy, or we got to find ways to ditch all the retirement income planning we have ever done, and tap our retirement funds in some planned way. As may also guess, the latter is what we picked.