Tag Archives: Financial Independence

Weekly Wrap: Semi-retirement, Mini-Retirements, RVing & Variants

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | July 11, 2015

The current issue of MoneySense features my Financial Independence column, with the current instalment being an update on the “semi-retired” first year of my personal Findependence: What semi-retirement is really like.

Do a search on semi-retirement and/or financial independence and you’ll find plenty more articles on this theme. For instance, in February, the Afford Anything blog ran a piece titled Mini-Retirements, Semi-Retirement, Early Retirement — What’s the Most Awesome Lifestyle? There are some interesting variants in the piece, such as “Perpetual Semi-Retirement.”

Back in April, The Toronto Star and other media ran stories like this one: Semi-retirement the new normal in Canada: Survey. The Hub also weighed in on the survey, noting that 15% plan never to fully retire, but many will embrace Semi-Retirement.

Way back, the Get Rich Slowly blog ran this reader story about Making the Move to Semi-Retirement. Note the reference to the classic book about Financial Independence, Your Money or Your Life, which is all about the tradeoffs between time/life energy and money. Recommended reading for anyone interested in Findependence!

The RV has replaced the rocking chair

5 Asian locations where retirement is more affordable than North America

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | July 10, 2015

By Jonathan Chevreau

Financial Independence Hub

I’ve personally never travelled to southeast Asia, although my family has and my daughter currently is posted in Hong Kong for a one-year teaching gig. As a result, I was more than usually interested when a review copy came in the mail titled Planet Boomer: Retire now for less in Southeast Asia.

It’s written by a boomer Canadian couple, Jim Herrier and Ellen Ma, who left marketing and advertising positions in 2006 to move to Singapore and Shanghai, then researched a bunch of other locations to help them write the book.

The book is slated for release in mid-August.

Asia 50% more affordable than North America

The pair argue that the financial crisis of 2008-2009 battered the investment portfolios of many Canadian boomers, and that “the math of a comfortable retirement for many of the nearly 10 million Canadians between 44 and 64 is not working anymore.” On average, those boomers are $400,000 short of their ideal retirement savings goal. Most of the 15 destinations in five Southeast Asian countries are at least 50% more affordable than Canada or the United States. Continue Reading…

Protecting Your Nest Egg In Retirement

Posted By Financial Independence Hub | July 9, 2015

By Marie Engen, Boomer & Echo

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Investors who are in, or near, retirement are in a difficult position. They need their investments to provide them with steady cash flow to live on, but they also need their wealth to last for a potentially long life.

Retirees who are caught in a bear market don’t have the time to wait out temporary dips in stock prices, even if they have a greater risk tolerance. Being forced to sell investments that have plummeted in order to provide money to live could have a devastating effect on the sustainability of a portfolio.

Some investment advisors are mobilized to guide their pre-retirement clients out of equities and into bonds, in an effort to offer income and stability. But now that interest rates have reached historical lows, traditional bond portfolios will have a difficult time providing an acceptable level of income while protecting purchasing power over the next 25 to 30 years.

Structure your portfolio for both short- and long-term needs

Ageing rates vary widely — and so may age of traditional retirement

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | July 7, 2015

The BBC is reporting today on a study that shows Ageing rates vary widely. According to the report by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, even people born within a year of each other experienced a huge gulf in the speed at which their bodies age.

I was particularly struck by the finding that some 38-year olds were ageing so badly that their biological age was “on the cusp of retirement.” The study subjects were 954 people from New Zealand born between 1972 and 1973. 18 ageing-related traits were examined as the members of the group turned 26, 32 and 38. So in the case of the 38-year-old cohort, the “biological age” ranged from the late 20s to “nearly 60” — hence the “cusp of retirement” verbiage.

In some cases, the subjects appeared to virtually stop ageing while they found that others gained almost three years of biological age for every 12 months that passed. Those with older biological ages were found to perform worse in tests of brain function, and also tended to have a weaker grip.

Issues of fairness and egalitarianism

Some Early Stage Encore Career Observations and Recommendations

Posted By Michael Drak | July 6, 2015

By Michael Drak

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

I started my own encore career back in February 2015; here are some of the things you might want to consider when planning your own encore career:

Should you tell your boss you plan to leave and start an Encore Career?

Bosses can start to act a little funny after you tell them you plan to leave the company at some point in the future. For some reason they believe that you are no longer fully committed to your job and that your performance will start to slide as you focus on getting ready for your new career.

This can cause some friction, so it’s best to make sure you have the bulk of your encore job preparation completed prior to dropping the bomb, just in case. In my own situation within three months of having declared I was planning to leave I was pleasantly surprised to receive a buy-out from the company. Was it a coincidence? Who knows, but I’d rather receive a payout versus a gold watch any day, plus it provided me with some liquidity until my new business starts generating a profit.

Do as much advanced preparation as you can prior to leaving your job

My original plan was to tell everyone that I was leaving in two years and during that time learn to run a blog and start working on my retirement book. Getting bought out accelerated things. In hindsight, it might have been better to have started the book and other projects prior to making the announcement.

Have a safety net in place so you can sleep at night Continue Reading…

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