retirement planning

We are all familiar with the following perennial adage: “health is wealth”. Regardless of any financial circumstances you may have, optimum health allows you to enjoy long trips overseas, partake in your grandchildren’s life, physical activities such as golf as well as looking forward to your retirement years. No one wants to have to worry about the expenses that come with health problems in retirement. Medication is not cheap, insurance rates change and other expenses can quickly put you into debt.

Convert RRSPs to income - Roger and Sarah, retired for several years, have delayed taking income from their RRSPs so they could enjoy the tax deferred growth as long as possible. They must start an income from their RRSPs before the end of the year they turn age 71.

Review investment portfolio - Joanne had been using investment funds to save for retirement. She had benefited over the long term by investing in equities, but wants a more income-oriented portfolio with less volatility for her retirement income needs.

For years, you have been anticipating that last day at work. When it finally arrives, will it live up to your expectations?

Retirement looks different in everyone’s imagination. For some, it means never wearing a tie again – for any reason. For others, it means traveling the world in designer clothes while attending fancy social events or elaborate musical performances. Some might envision it as a poolside chair with a cold glass of lemonade that never runs out.

While the lemonade may be in unlimited supply, your attention span is not. What happens if you get bored?

Retirement used to mean a gold watch, a pension and spending time on hobbies or new pastimes. For some this may still be true, but times have changed and there are new realities that will affect how retirement will look in the future.

The largest segment of the population in Canada today, the "Baby Boomers", started retiring in large numbers a few years ago. Those born in 1947 are considered the first Baby Boomers and they reached age 65 back in 2012. Many were in position to retire immediately while some of their peers have had to postpone or scale back their retirement plans.

Increasingly consumers in major Canadian cities such as Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver or Toronto, are faced with a dilemma of how to best manage their cash flow in the face of record mortgage and consumer debt.

Over the last one hundred years, every new generation of Canadians has enjoyed the benefit of a longer life expectancy. With dramatic improvements in health care, the human life span has never been longer. Additionally, some have set their sights on early retirement. The combination of living longer and retiring earlier creates a serious cash crunch because that greatly expands your time in retirement. A financial advisor can help you develop a plan to solve this critical problem.

Gordon and Anne lived in the same house for over 30 years. Now that their children are grown and it was becoming more difficult for them to manage the house, they decided to downsize. Here is what Gordon and Anne did to get the best price they could when they sold their home:

With the RRSP contribution deadline of March 2nd fast approaching many people will reflexively make a deposit to their RRSP. Many will use online banking to throw money into the RRSP at the last minute vowing to figure out how to invest it later. But life gets in the way and later never happens and the contribution sits in daily interest account earning little or no interest.

In this, the final installment of the series, Financial Strategies Simplified, we take a look at how to stretch your retirement income no matter how modest the starting balance.

There is a common misconception amongst clients that the day they retire their approach to investing and managing their RRSPs etc. has to change. But the reality is that today's Seniors are in many cases living until age 90 or more and the motherhood rules of investing - buy only safe fixed-income investments - may no longer apply.

The so-called RRSP Season is on its way. TV, newspapers and magazines will soon be full of advertising to get you to make your last-minute RRSP deposits. And then RRSPs and retirement planning are often forgotten until the next deadline. But a little advance planning will get you more from your RRSP.