Tag Archives: RRIFs

Federal Budget 2016: don’t expect much relief for personal finances or retirement

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Federal finance minister Bill Morneau selects Canadian-designed shoes for upcoming federal budget

Here’s my latest column in the Financial Post, which provides a look ahead to the federal budget, which will go live at 4 pm Tuesday afternoon.

You can find the column here by clicking on this headline: Why Tuesday’s budget may not hold much good news for your personal finances. It’s also in the print edition of today’s paper.

Here is info on the media lockup, which starts at 9:30 am.

Once the floodgates open on or shortly after 4 pm Tuesday, you should be able to get access to the budget by clicking on the Department of Finance website here. We will update this site as necessary and also watch my Twitter feed @JonChevreau, as we disseminate coverage once available. This feed also shows up on the right side of the Hub’s main page.

Can RRSPs ever get too large?

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Canadian Registered Retirement Savings Plan concept word cloudCan a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) ever get too large? From time to time, you’ll hear certain financial advisors say so and propose “melting down” RRSPs in a tax-effective manner.

The Financial Post just ran a piece by me on this topic, entitled The Pros and Perils of making early withdrawals from your RRSP. One of the sources cited is a familiar one to Hub readers: Doug Dahmer of Emeritus Financial Strategies often writes guest blogs in the Hub’s Decumulation section.

RRSP primer for millennials

Continue Reading…

Investor Toolkit: The right way to calculate your retirement income

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Patrick McKeough, TSInetwork.ca

By Patrick McKeough, TSInetwork.ca

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Tip of the week: “When you work out a plan for your retirement, make sure that you aren’t basing your future income on over-optimistic calculations that will end up leaving you short.”

Every year as RRSP season heats up, many investors are confident they are taking concrete steps toward a secure retirement. But are those steps based on realistic calculations?

Let’s say you’re 50 and you want to retire at 65. You have $200,000 in your RRSP, and you expect to add $15,000 in each of the next 15 years. To determine if this is enough to retire on, you need to make assumptions about investment returns and income needs.

• What you can expect

Long-term studies show that the stock market as a whole generally produces total pre-tax annual returns of 8% to 10%, or around 6% after inflation. For purposes of this retirement plan, we’ll assume a 6% yearly return, and disregard inflation. Continue Reading…

A rare breed of financial planner

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Piggy Bank Cuts with Money Savings Financial concept on Chalkboard Background
Photo credit: iStockphoto

by Doug Dahmer,  EmeritusFinancial.com

Special to the Financial Independence Hub 

Retirement Income Specialists are a very rare breed of financial planner. So rare, in fact, that to date, the vast majority of North Americans are unaware of their existence and consequently very few have benefitted from the valuable, and much needed, services they provide.

This new specialized category of financial advisor is at the leading edge of strategically assisting North Americans to convert their accumulated retirement nest egg into a reliable and sustainable income stream.

Long-lived boomers face greater saving challenge

The challenges are not for the faint of heart. With baby boomers living longer, the years to be funded have increased significantly. There is no clear path to follow, as baby boomers are redefining retirement in terms of both planned activity level and their desire to slowly transition out of active employment.

Most importantly, baby boomers represent the first generation where the vast majority will be left to their own devices to cobble together a process to fund their lifestyle after work ends. Continue Reading…

Weekly Wrap: We ARE saving enough for retirement; CPP & Social Security Redux, frugal millionaires

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Malcolm Hamilton at MoneySense’s fall Retiring Rich event

Retired actuary and retirement guru Malcolm Hamilton this week released a C.D. Howe paper entitled Do Canadians Save Too Little? The Hub’s initial take ran Thursday here: It’s an exaggeration to say we are saving too little for retirement.

Hamilton also wrote a summary of the paper in the FP Comment section of the Financial Post on Thursday, bearing the title False pension assumptions on Canadian savings.

We at the Hub have always said frugality is the key to saving and ultimately building wealth. But according to the most-emailed New York Times article this week, it’s tough for millionaires to dump the frugal habits that got them there: Millionaires who are frugal when they don’t have to be.  Shades of the book, The Millionaire Next Door!

More (much more!) on Voluntary CPP Continue Reading…