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The Globe & Mail’s Report on Business has just published my piece titled A remedy for sufferers of pension envy, which you can access by clicking the highlighted text.
It describes the long-established Individual Pension Plan (IPP) and a newer variant called the Personal Pension Plan (PPP). The creator of the latter, Jean-Pierre Laporte (pictured to the left) estimates 1.2 million Canadian business owners could benefit from these plans, which are in effect Defined Benefit (DB) pension plans designed for professionals and business owners.
The newer PPP from Integris Pension Management Corp. is a hybrid in that it can be either a DB plan or a more market-sensitive Defined Contribution (DC) pension.
Several sources in the piece have written at more length on these topics here on the Hub. For example, see this blog from the Hub last November: How a Personal Pension Plan can mimic gold-plated DB pensions. Or see Trevor Parry’s most recent Hub blog, Making Canada Great Again. Perry sees both IPPs and PPPs as increasingly relevant in the current Canadian tax environment.
One source I consulted for the piece but didn’t appear is financial advisor and author Tim Paziuk. Paziuk – of Victoria, BC-based TPC Financial Group Ltd. – laments the fact that “employees of the public sector and large corporations enjoy benefits and retirement plans that are unavailable to the private business owner.” As he noted in a recent Hub blog after the last federal Budget — On the Middle Class and Paying One’s Fair Share of Taxes — the pending Liberal working paper on the middle class and tax fairness doesn’t augur well for owners of corporations and even family members who enjoy “income sprinkling” from such corporations.
Fortunately new tools like the PPP and the not-so-new IPP give business owners a way to fight back. You can find on the web various debates between those who prefer the IPP and the PPP. For example, also quoted in the Globe article is Stephen Cheng, of Westcoast Actuaries, who has debated the plans with LaPorte here. Laporte’s reply can be found here: Comparing old IPPs to PPPs.
Motley Fool: Canadians overrate their financial literacy?
P.S. Here’s my latest blog for Motley Fool Canada. The headline pretty much sums up the story: Overconfident Millennials and Gen X flunk Financial Literacy Test, but Boomers only marginally better.
And while on the topic of financial literacy, I was gratified to be named one of Canada’s top online finance influencers, as conveyed by RazorPlan.com in this post.
