Tag Archives: Financial Independence

Victory Lap Retirement: A Retirement book about NOT (fully) retiring

Posted By Michael Drak | June 27, 2016

The fun now begins because Jonathan and I finally get to enjoy the fruits of our labours. The book Victory Lap Retirement has been written, the website and blog has come to life and our first pre-orders are starting to trickle in.

But there is much work to be done to accomplish our goal of building the VLR tribe and helping as many people as possible start their own version of a VLR lifestyle. Great things take time but the results are well worth it once you get there!

Everyone needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning

During your primary career, when you worked for money to ensure security for your family, you had a good reason to get out of bed each morning. But in VLR now that you have achieved Financial Independence (FI) and left your primary career you will need to find another good reason and we believe that some combination of work/leisure will satisfy that need for you. If it is work for pay even better!

Wealthsimple & NewRetirement.com profile me on Findependence & Victory Lap

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | June 23, 2016

Making the rounds of social media this afternoon is a profile of Yours Truly created by Toronto-based robo adviser Wealthsimple.

It can be found at its Grow blog, titled One of Canada’s Favourite Money Gurus Tells Us How He Retired at 60 Without Ever Being Rich. We hope to run the piece in its entirety here at the Hub but in the meantime, social media waits for no one.

It was based on an interview conducted a few weeks ago and readers may find the prose as eclectic as the artists’ rendition of myself. But as one reader noted on Facebook, there’s plenty of personal finance “wisdom” in there (if I do say so myself): no surprise since it refers in part to last summer’s 7 Eternal Truths of Personal Finance that ran in the Financial Post, and which are revisited in the book I’m releasing this summer. Written with Mike Drak, it’s called Victory Lap Retirement. Link is to Mike’s new site, where you can preorder the book. We’ll resume running Mike’s Victory Lap blogs here at the Hub in a week or two.

The Wealthsimple profile also refers obliquely to the new book.

NewRetirement.com Q&A with me on benefits of Findependence

Also today, NewRetirement.com published a Q&A with me that also talks about Findependence and Victory Lap Retirement. Click on Jonathan Chevreau on the Benefits of Financial Independence. It does a pretty good job of summarizing what Mike and I describe in the book: the years of “slaving and saving” needed to get to the Findependence Finish Line (aka Findependence Day), and then the post-corporate Victory Lap phase that ensues.

MoneySense blog on Bonds

Retirement income planning for you and your spouse

Posted By Financial Independence Hub | June 23, 2016

By Pat McKeough, TSINetwork.ca

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

There are a few retirement income planning steps you and your spouse can take to lower your taxes.
These steps work especially well if your spouse makes a lower income than you do.

There are lots of ways to shift investment capital and income to the lower-income spouse. This lets you lower your overall tax bill right now. It also ensures that each spouse gets roughly the same amount of income in retirement. That will cut taxes later, as well.

We’ve discussed other retirement income planning techniques like paying your spouse’s bills, setting up a spousal RRSP and swapping assets for cash or shares. Here are more ideas:

Reinvesting attributed income

Will an expanded CPP speed your Findependence Day?

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | June 22, 2016

Lots of media coverage this week about the (relatively) modest expansion of the Canada Pension Plan. As I noted in the print edition of Wednesday’s Financial Post (and online), this isn’t going to help almost-retired baby boomers in any material fashion but it’s certainly a welcome development for the generations that follow, including the Boomers’ own kids.

I note that quite independently, the Globe & Mail’s Rob Carrick was equally in favour of the changes: We can’t afford NOT to make these changes.

(Added Thursday: My take on this for Motley Fool Canada can be found by clicking on this highlighted headline: CPP Expansion Too Late for Boomers but a Win for their Children.)

As I speculated in the headline of sister site FindependenceDay.com, you could argue that a slightly sweeter CPP package of benefits should at least marginally speed up the arrival of the Millennials’ collective Findependence Day. However, I also noted that — as in my own case — there is still an incentive to delay the receipt of CPP benefits. In a way, Boomers who don’t take “early” CPP at 60 and opt to wait until closer to 70 are choosing to almost double their ultimate benefits.

There’s still an incentive to delay receipt of benefits

Six rules for Foolish investing, as Fools visit Canada

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | June 17, 2016

IMG_6616(2) — L to R: Motley Fool’s Gardner, Butler, Muckerman and Gillies (Photo J. Chevreau)

Motley Fool co-founder and CEO Tom Gardner and his team of Canadian stock analysts were in Canada for a members-only event in Toronto on Thursday night.

Pictured is Gardner (in blue on the left) asking for stock buy and sell recommendations from a panel of three Fool analysts. From left to right, they are Stock Advisor Canada’s Iain Butler and Taylor Muckerman, and Pro Canada’s Jim Gillies on the extreme right.

The colourful headgear is of course central to the Motley Fool brand. The stock newsletter publishing company is based in Alexandria, VA. It’s also well known for its daily financial podcasts, with most of the panelists regular contributors.

The 6 Rules

Gardner kicked off the evening with his six rules for succeeding as a Motley Fool investor:

Rule #1: Everyone should have at least 20 to 40 stocks. That’s a minimum but there’s no need to cap it at 40, Gardner said. Continue Reading…