Insights

The years leading into retirement are full of excitement and anticipation of a new life, free to enjoy it as you wish. The years leading towards and into retirement can also be some of the most anxious years, as getting used to managing finances in retirement can be overwhelming. There are 3 mistakes that I see prospective retirees making. In this video, I walk through the 3 mistakes, and offer some resources and perspectives that I hope will help.

BMO released their Annual Retirement Study in February, which revealed that respondents to their retirement survey believe that they will need about $1.7M to retire comfortably in Canada. In this video, I walk through what a $1.7M retirement would look like for the average Canadian retiring couple.

Are you approaching retirement, or in retirement, and wondering - when is it a good time for me to add my kids as joint owners on my investment accounts? Perhaps you want to smooth the process of getting those assets to your children later on, or you want to avoid the estate process, or possibly avoid taxes. While these may be noble intentions - adding adult children to investment accounts may carry consequences that you want to avoid.

In this video I walk through the 6 main categories of spending that you should factor into your retirement budget.

The analogy of changing the roof on your house is a useful one when considering the purchase life insurance as you get older. The question is, do you need life insurance as you are entering perhaps the later stages of your working life?

I sat down with David Field from Papyrus Planning about the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) program. In this discussion we cover the Canada Pension Plan program at a high level, as well as his tool the CPP Calculator, and how it can be used to help you estimate your CPP benefits.

In this video, I challenge the assumption that retirees should avoid all volatility in their retirement portfolios. I look at a retiree who began retirement in 2008 with a 60% stock / 40% bond portfolio, and compared their withdrawal experience with another retiree who held only cash or short term fixed income estimates.

The decision of when to begin receiving Canada Pension Plan (CPP) benefits can have a huge impact on your retirement income plan. In this video, I walk through the CPP benefit at a high level, and talk about the factors that weigh on the decision of when to begin drawing your CPP.

In this video series, Jason and I talk about several estate planning issues facing soon-to-be retirees. Topics include passing down a family cottage, things to consider with second marriages, and how to properly give gifts and loans to your children.