Retirement

Young people can take advantage of decades of TFSA contribution room to accumulate enough savings to be well positioned for retirement when the time comes. But for those close to, or already in retirement, TFSAs have not been around long enough to be a large portion of retirement savings. It’s more likely that you have…

If your retirement date is approaching, are you ready for this major life change? Your regular paycheque will be ending, and your income must come from other sources. By now you should have some idea of how you’d like to spend your retirement – what activities you will enjoy; where you will want to live.…

It’s likely that investing for retirement is the most long-range, expensive goal most of us will ever face. In the early years that far off future can be pretty vague, and many of us wait until we actually retire before putting a plan together, if we plan at all. Smart retirees start thinking about what…

The Federal and Provincial finance ministers met again earlier this week to pursue their ongoing discussions on how to improve the Canada Pension Plan. The majority of the provinces agreed to make the following changes to CPP: New CPP Changes Explained 1. “Drop-out” becomes “drop-in” Currently, CPP recipients can drop years of lower earnings from…

A reader suggested I expand on my post on converting RRSPs to RRIFs to include locked-in plans. So here it is. Thank you, Frank. What is a LIRA? First, let’s review. Employees enrolled in a registered pension plan who remain with their company until the prescribed retirement age will receive income for life from the…

Remember going to a craft and hobby show, or looking through a magazine, and seeing in your mind’s eye all those great projects you could make? Or watching the sports channel and dreaming about aces, holes-in-one, or the salmon you could catch? When most of us imagine retirement, our minds wander to what we’ll get…

Scott Terrio’s Twitter feed reads like a financial horror story. Terrio, an insolvency expert at Cooper & Co. in Toronto, uses the 140-character medium to share the multitude of ways seemingly well-off Canadians end up buried in debt and turning to debt consolidation, consumer proposals, and even bankruptcy. Canada’s record household debt levels have been…

Retirement planning advice for singles is similar to that for couples – track your expenses, clear up debt, automate your savings, and keep investment costs low. However, being single, whether by choice, or as a result of being widowed or divorced, presents some financial planning challenges. The biggest challenge of being a single person is…

When I worked in banking, on December 31 we usually closed the branch at 3 pm so us bankers could get a head start on our New Year’s Eve partying. One year, at about 2:55 pm, a fellow sat down in my office and told me he needed to convert his RRSP to a RRIF.…

In financial publications, you regularly read about couples that are wondering if they are able to retire as planned. These people all seem to have above average incomes, company pension plans, have been saving since they were five years old and have amassed a respectable portfolio. The consensus is always, “Yes, you will definitely be…