Insights

According to a recent study by Ipsos Reid, 57% of pre-retirees surveyed and 37% of retirees surveyed indicated that running out of money in retirement was among their top financial concerns. Far and away, the greatest fear that I hear from people getting ready for retirement is the fear of running out of money. In this video I am going to walk you through 4 steps you can take if you are worried about running out of money in retirement.

I was recently asked for my thoughts on reverse mortgages. The topic can bring up strong feelings and troubling stories of family members who took out a reverse mortgage and had a bad financial outcome. But, like many financial products, reverse mortgages are a tool. They can do a lot of damage in situations where they are used incorrectly. And they can be a great solution for a retiree who meets a number of important criteria.

A viewer asks "How does retiring early affect CPP calculations? If you retire at 55, are all of the years following 55 to 65 counted as 0 income for the purpose of determining your average CPP contributions and therefore your payout in retirement? If so, and you start collecting CPP at 60, would that remove 5 years of 0 contributions, or would 60-65 still be counted as 0 CPP contributions for the average?"

Many Canadians have children who are nearing the end of their post secondary education, and they may be holding onto RESP account balances and wondering what they should be doing with them?   For example, their child’s education costs may have been less than they anticipated, their student may have saved through part time work while they were in school, or they may have received scholarships and bursaries that more than covered their education costs.  In this video I’m going to walk through some of the options to effectively use up leftover RESP account balances.

In this video, I am going to walk through the exact process that I step through with clients who are considering hiring me as their financial planner. I will step through the documents that I review, the discussions that we have, and the deliverable that every client gets before they make any decisions. I will outline the main components of a retirement financial plan, the criteria that you should use to measure how good or bad a retirement plan is, and to give you an idea of what it might look like to get started working with me.

In today's episode, I answer your questions, including answers to the following: 1) CPP vs OAS deferral 2) Income investment strategies 3) Inflation 4) RRSP or TFSA for children - which one is better? 5) TFSA's in Retirement 6) RRSP Meltdowns

On April 16 the Minister of Finance delivered the 2024 Federal Budget in the House of Commons. The budget contained a long list of new spending initiatives and also included new tax measures that will have a big impact on individual Canadians and businesses. In this video I am going to focus on several items in the budget that I believe will have an impact specifically for retirees and their families. 1. The New Capital Gains inclusion rates 2. Amendments to the Home Buyers Plan 3. New RESP rules 4. Automatic Tax Filing 5. My personal thoughts on the budget to close

In today’s videos I am going to briefly outline different types of life insurance, why insurance is sometimes misused, good reasons for retirees to hold life insurance and some not so good reasons that people hold life insurance in retirement.

The Ontario Securities Commission surveyed 1500 Canadians age 50 and older about retirement. Their findings report was nearly 100 slides long and provides insights into several key topics for both retirees and soon-to-be retirees. I went through the report and pulled out the most eye-opening findings.

You’ve got 5 years until retirement at age 65, but you have the opportunity to begin taking CPP payments now at age 60. You don’t need the money to live on, but you are wondering if you should take the money from CPP and invest it with the hopes that you can do better in the long run. In this video I am going to walk through this decision for our sample retiree couple – Johnny and Janey. We will look at the impact that taking CPP early and investing the money has on their retirement plan. And we’ll close the video with discussing some reasons why you may consider taking CPP as early as age 60.