Tag Archives: Financial Independence

Retirement Planning in your 20s

Posted By |

 

By Jenn Hamann

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Young people are notoriously focused on the here and now. With their entire lives ahead of them, it’s easy for them to lose sight of how important it can be to plan for the future. This is especially true when it comes to retirement planning. The subject is far from exciting, but it can have a tremendous impact on your life as you get older. Failing to have enough retirement savings when you leave the workforce could make it much more difficult for you to enjoy your golden years.

At least you wouldn’t be alone. More than 40 per cent of millennials say they have not yet started saving for the future. The good news is that the sooner you start, the better off you’ll be when the day finally comes.

One of the most significant obstacles when it comes to millennial retirement savings is simply waiting too long to get started. Many younger workers don’t take full advantage of their employers’ 401(k) matching contributions, for example (in the U.S.; the Canadian equivalent are group RRSPs or Defined Contribution pension contributions). The simple math says that the earlier you begin, the more you potentially could have when you cash out your savings.

If you’re one of those who are convinced you still have time to ignore your future, think again. The adjacent infographic shares some sobering facts about the importance of financial planning, as well as some tips you can use to be more prepared.

Jenn Hamann is Executive Vice President of ToInsure.Me, a leading provider of auto, life and home insurance. She has more than 12 years of experience in the industry, and currently focuses on sales, managing, planning, coaching and retaining business. 

 

Mental Accounting and how we spend money

Posted By |

We all have quirky behaviours when it comes to managing money. One trick we fall victim to is called mental accounting. We separate our money into different types of mental accounts, with different rules, depending upon how we get it, how we spend it, and how it makes us feel.

An easy example is when you have a fund set aside for something like a vacation or house down payment while at the same time carrying high-interest credit-card debt. Or how you decide to spend a $1,200 tax refund versus what you’d do with $100 per month if you had the right amount of tax coming off your paycheque in the first place.

I’m guilty of mental accounting every month when I budget $1,000 for groceries, $200 for dining out, $125 for clothing, and $75 for alcohol. I manipulate those mental accounts all the time, like when I overspend in one category and just take it out of another (shifting a meal from ‘dining’ to ‘entertainment’ for example).

The Mental Accounting challenge

Why do we assign money to these mental categories? One answer is to control how we think about it. If we were perfectly rational and could figure out the opportunity costs and complex trade-offs of every single financial transaction then it wouldn’t matter how we label our money: it would just come from a big pool called ‘our money.’ It’s just money, after all; totally fungible and interchangeable.

But because we’re human with cognitive limitations and emotions we need help with our money decisions. That’s where mental accounting comes in and acts as a useful shortcut for what decisions to make.

Another interesting way we classify our financial decisions has to do with the length of time between when we bought an item and when we consumed it.

Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler studied wine purchases and consumption and found that advance purchases of wine are often thought of as investments. Months or years later, when the bottle is opened and consumed, the consumption feels free, as if no money was spent on wine that evening. Continue Reading…

CPP Payments: How much will you receive from Canada Pension Plan?

Posted By |

Canada Pension Plan (CPP) benefits can make up a key portion of your income in retirement. Individuals receiving the maximum CPP payments at age 65 can expect to collect nearly $14,000 per year in benefits.

The amount of your CPP payments depends on two factors: how much you contributed, and how long you made contributions. Most don’t receive the maximum benefit. In fact, the average amount for new beneficiaries is just over $8,000 per year (as of March 2019).

CPP Payments 2019

The table below shows the monthly maximum CPP payment amounts for 2019, along with the average amount for new beneficiaries:

Type of pension or benefit Average amount for new beneficiaries (March 2019) Maximum payment amount (2019)
Retirement pension (at age 65) $679.16 $1,154.58
Disability benefit $980.24 $1,362.30
Survivor’s pension – younger than 65 $439.37 $626.63
Survivor’s pension – 65 and older $311.99 $692.75
Death benefit (one-time payment) $2,394.67 $2,500.00
Combined benefits
Combined survivor’s and retirement pension (at age 65) $869.86 $1,154.58
Combined survivor’s pension and disability benefit $1,096.12 $1,362.30

Now, you may not have a hot clue how much CPP you will receive in retirement, and that’s okay.

The good news is that the government does this calculation for you on an ongoing basis. This means that you can find out how much money the government would give you today, if you were already eligible to receive CPP. This information is available on your Canada Pension Plan Statement of Contribution. You can get your Statement of Contribution by logging into your My Service Canada Account, which – if you bank online with any of the major banks – is immediate.

Related: CRA My Account – How to check your tax information online

If you’d prefer to send your personal information by mail you can request a paper copy of your Statement of Contribution sent to you by calling 1.877.454.4051, or by printing out an Application for a Statement of Contributions from the Service Canada Website.

Note that the information available to you on your CPP Statement of Contribution may not reflect your actual CPP payments. That’s because it doesn’t factor in several variables that might affect the amount you’re entitled to receive (such as the child-rearing drop-out provision). The statement also assumes that you’re 65 today, which means that later years of higher or lower income that will affect the average lifetime earnings upon which your pension is based aren’t taken into consideration.

CPP is indexed to Inflation

Canada Pension Plan (CPP) rate increases are calculated once a year using the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The increases come into effect each January, and are legislated so that benefits keep up with the cost of living. The rate increase is the percentage change from one 12-month period to the previous 12-month period.

CPP payments were increased by 2.3 per cent in 2019, based on the average CPI from November 2017 to October 2018, divided by the average CPI from November 2016 to October 2017.

Note that if cost of living decreased over the 12-month period, the CPP payment amounts would not decrease, they’d stay at the same level as the previous year.

CPP Payment Dates

CPP payment dates are scheduled on a recurring basis a few days before the end of the month. This includes the CPP retirement pension and disability, children’s and survivor benefits. If you have signed up for direct deposit, payments will be automatically deposited in your bank account on these dates:

All CPP payment dates 2019

  • December 20, 2018
  • January 29, 2019
  • February 26, 2019
  • March 27, 2019
  • April 26, 2019
  • May 29, 2019
  • June 26, 2019
  • July 29, 2019
  • August 28, 2019
  • September 26, 2019
  • October 29, 2019
  • November 27, 2019
  • December 20, 2019

Why Don’t I Receive The CPP Maximum?

Only 6 per cent of CPP recipients receive the maximum payment amount, according to Employment and Social Development Canada. The average recipient receives just 59 per cent of the CPP maximum. With that in mind, it’s best to lower your CPP expectations when calculating your potential retirement income. Continue Reading…

Flipping Homes: One way young adults can achieve Financial Freedom

Posted By |

By Donna Johnson

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

One of the top ways to make money historically has involved investing in real estate. Buying distressed houses at a good price and then selling them for a profit, known as flipping, is a great option for making money in housing. For those who are young adults, there is time to take risks and recover if they don’t pan out. Flipping houses is one of those calculated risks that could help younger American or Canadian adults achieve financial freedom in relatively short order. Here is how the flipping process works.

Find a house

In order to flip a house, it’s necessary to first own the house. A house that’s ripe for flipping might be a very distressed house in a great neighborhood. With tens of thousands of dollars of work, flippers could theoretically earn a profit that equals or exceeds their initial investment. Even a home that’s merely a bit dated in its decor could provide a good opportunity in the right location.

It’s important to know the market before purchasing a house to flip. It will be difficult to sell a house for a profit in a bad neighborhood no matter how impressive the renovations are. Additionally, comps in the local market will need to be high enough to provide a gap between what the flip initially costs and what you can sell it for. Otherwise, it will be difficult to make a profit.

Have money available

It’s important to have quite a bit of cash on hand before beginning a house flip. Those 3.5% down payments associated with FHA loans [in the U.S.] are only available for homes that will be occupied by the owner. Banks consider flips investment properties. Therefore, a flipper can expect a bank to require a 20% down payment as security for a loan. Continue Reading…

The Pros and Cons of Dividend Investing

Posted By |
Photo created by rawpixel.com – www.freepik.com

My latest MoneySense Retired Money column has just been published, which you can retrieve by clicking on the highlighted headline: The Pros and Cons of Dividend Investing.

As with most of the Retired Money articles I write for the site, the piece looks at dividend investing from the perspective of someone in their 60s who is nearing retirement or semi-retired, as well as full retirees in their 70s.

It notes there are two major schools of thought on income investing.

In his book, You can retire sooner than you think, author and financial planner Wes Moss makes the case for retirees 60 or older having 100% of their portfolio in income-generating vehicles: whether interest, dividends, rental income from REITs or other securities: “Everything should be paying you an income from age 60 on.”

But there is a “total return” camp that argues total returns are what counts, whether generated by capital gains or cap gains combined with a growing stream of dividend income. In his series of “Stop doing” blogs, Toronto-based advisor Steve Lowrie argued investors should Stop chasing dividends.

One of the most romanticized ideas in personal finance?

Also in the total-return camp is PWL Capital portfolio manager Benjamin Felix, who tackled this in a Q&A column where a young Gen Y investor asked how he could create an all-dividend portfolio so he could retire early. Felix has said dividend investing is “one of the most romanticized ideas in personal finance”—citing a 2013 study by Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) that found 60% of U.S. stocks and 40% of international stocks don’t pay dividends, plus the fact that Warren Buffett declared dividends should not matter in making great investments. So, he concluded, an all-dividend approach would lead to “poor diversification.” Felix also dispelled the misconceptions that dividends are a guaranteed source of returns, offer protection in down markets, and that companies that grow their dividends necessarily beat the market. Continue Reading…