Tag Archives: Victory Lap

How to retire and fill 40 hours a week

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By Tea Nicola

(Sponsor Content)

“Can you believe it, honey? Friday’s my last day at work! Time sure flies. I can’t wait to start spending all of our free time together!”

Did this thought warm your heart, or get your pulse racing in panic? That probably depends on whether you’ve given some good thought to what you’re doing after retirement.

But what do you actually want to do after you stop working? Your retirement income goals will depend much on your answer to that question, as your financial adviser is apt to tell you.

We’re living longer — and that’s a good thing, if you plan for it

‘Retirement’ wasn’t really a thing, until recently. You lived, you worked, you died … and the world kept turning as youth picked up the baton of life’s track meet. That’s partly the reason pension age was set at 65: few were expected to live long enough to claim it! When the USA passed their Social Security Act in 1935, American men were expected to live to about 58.

But with our longer life spans, you could still be shuffling around decades after you’ve stopped working. According to Statistics Canada and the 2016 Census, “there were 5.9 million seniors in Canada, which accounted for 16.9% of the total population. In comparison, there were 2.4 million seniors in 1981, or 10% of the population.”

There are more retirees than ever! So, our question is a practical one: how do you retire and still fill 40 hours a week?

What Canadian retirees are already doing with their time

How to retire and fill 40 hours a week. Time chart

Does this all seem inspiring … or overwhelming? Is the room spinning at the prospect of playing shuffleboard and doing yard work for the next two or three decades? Fortunately, we’ve picked up an important idea from doing retirement income planning with countless clients. Continue Reading…

How to Retire debt-free

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By Laurie Campbell

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

These days, don’t be surprised to find a senior citizen standing behind the counter of your favourite fast food spot taking your order instead of a braces-wearing teen. What retirement looks like today has changed quite significantly from what it was even just ten years ago, and there’s no stopping this trend. More and more seniors are staying in the workforce, and for many of them, they have no choice.

Last June for Seniors Month, our agency, Credit Canada co-sponsored a seniors and money study that looked at the financial difficulties Canadian seniors are facing; the results, while shocking, were no surprise.

As a non-profit credit counselling agency, our counsellors are on the forefront of what’s happening when it comes to people and their financial hardships, and we are seeing a large number of people who should be starting to settle into their “golden years” still working, maybe even taking on an additional side job, just to pay off their debt, let alone get a time-share in Florida.

When we conducted our study in June 2018, it revealed that one-in-five Canadians are still working past age 60, including six per cent of those 80 and older. And while one third do so simply because they want to — which is fantastic, kudos to you — 60 per cent are still working because of some form of financial hardship, whether it’s too much debt, not enough savings, or other financial responsibilities, like supporting adult children.

The truth is the golden years have been tarnished, and I don’t know if we’ll ever get them back.

Half of 60-plus carrying some form of debt

Many of today’s retirees are living on fixed incomes, making them vulnerable to unpaid debt. In fact, our study revealed more than half of Canadians age 60 and older are carrying at least one form of debt, with a quarter carrying two or more types of debt. What’s even more alarming is that 35 per cent of seniors age 80 and older have debt, including credit-card debt and even car loans.

Staring at the problem isn’t going to help, nor is hiding from it. The best thing we can all do is to face the facts head-on and devise a plan of action that we know will work, whether it’s getting rid of any debt while building up savings, taking on a side job, delaying retirement by a few years, or all of the above.

Sizing up Government support

Before delving into the numbers it’s important to understand what income you can expect to have during your retirement. A few numbers have been compiled here as an example, but if you wanted to get more detailed information you can visit the Government of Canada website and click on the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) or Old Age Security (OAS) pages.

So, let’s get started by taking a look at 2017. Continue Reading…

There’s more to Retirement than Financial Planning

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The retirement industry is starting to wake up to the fact that just because a client has achieved a certain level of retirement savings doesn’t mean that they will automatically enjoy a happy retirement.

Life just doesn’t work that way and the truth is that financial planning fails without lifestyle planning: you need to have a good handle on what you are actually saving for and why.

Our level of happiness is not determined by how much money we have; rather, it is how we choose to live our lives. In our new transition guide we have compiled a list of key attributes that if focused on will help you live longer, healthier and happier lives. By focusing on these attributes you will be well on your way to a happy and fulfilling life.

Today I would like to share some thoughts I have on one of these attributes, which is our relationship with time.

Time: Your most precious resource

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo de Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” – H. Jackson Brown

Visiting my mother at the nursing home always reminds me that I’m getting old and every day is bringing me closer to the end. It is not a negative thought; rather, it’s an important reminder to focus and use my remaining time on this planet wisely on the things that really matter. Rushing around stressed out because I’m wasting my time is a major happiness killer for me. Watching my mother I often wonder if I am living my “why,” the best I can? Can I do better? Am I doing the best for my family?  For my friends? Am I making the world a little better?

Best Before Date

Today I’m working hard at getting into shape. My time investment is a priority of mine as it will increase the odds of me living longer, and also help push back my “best before date” increasing the amount of quality time I have at my disposal.

I view “quality time” as the period of my life when I am healthy enough to do the things I love:  golfing, fishing, traveling etc. Once you pass the “best before date” and have lost your health it really doesn’t matter how much money or time you have left because you will not be healthy enough to spend it. That’s just the way it is.

Black Swan Events

Continue Reading…

Retired Money: How to be financially, physically and emotionally fit for Retirement

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My latest MoneySense Retired Money column, which has just been published, looks at a self-published book by the semi-retired (at age 64) Howard Pell. His book is titled Retire Fit, Fit & Fit. Click on the highlighted headline to retrieve the full MoneySense column: Retirement fitness involves mind and body, as well as money.

So what does the Fit, Fit & Fit mean? It’s in the headline of this blog as well as the adjacent photo taken from the book cover, which is the book’s subtitle. So it’s referring to being all three of financially fit, physically fit and emotionally fit for Retirement.

There are plenty of books about financial fitness so Pell pays only lip service to that aspect: what he brings to the table is insights on how to integrate finances with physical and emotional fitness. (To some extent, so does the book I co-authored with Mike Drak: Victory Lap Retirement)

Pell, who is based in Waterloo, Ont., does add a few newish terms to the semi-retirement lexicon.  He dubs the lifestyle “voluntary unemployment” but like many at this stage, finds the word “retired” inadequate. He tosses out several alternatives but the best one is his suggestion to simply adopt the Spanish word for “retired,” which is Jubilado (for males) or Jubilada (for females.”) He would use the term to signify anyone who is financially, physically and emotionally fit.

I can certainly relate to his observation of the semi-retired life that  “The big difference is that now all my deadlines and commitments are self-imposed.” Of course, as the old quip goes about driven self-employed business people: “My boss is a slavedriver.”

Pell also went personally through the “glide path” to semi-retirement described in other Retired Money columns and here at the Hub, via working a three-day week for his then employer during the last two years of his time there. This is a good way to test out your financial fitness while also clearing time for more physical fitness and — perhaps the toughest challenge — preparing for emotional fitness for retirement (I’m speaking for myself here.)

Finding the sweet spot

A Venn diagram on page 7 of Pell’s book (shown adjacent) illustrates that the sweet spot is the intersection where financial, emotional and physical fitness all converge.

If they don’t, and you became financially fit by selling out either your physical and/or your emotional health, the retirement your finances make possible may be a very limited and unsatisfying one.

It’s also possible to be only physically fit or only emotionally fit but lack the financial resources for retirement. The need to keep working to pay the bills will be frustrating, especially if all your peers have retired.

Continue Reading…

Retired Money: Reflections on turning 65 and transitioning into Retirement

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Well, I’m officially “old” if you go by the federal Government’s eligibility date for receiving Old Age Security (OAS) benefits. The traditional retirement age has long been age 65, a milestone I reached on April 6th. As I have previously written, I had a hockey tournament to play that weekend so the party my wife and I host every 5 years or so was postponed to late May, by which time we calculated my first OAS cheque should have been deposited into our joint account. (There appears to be roughly a six-week gap between turning 65 and the first payment, even if you set up the process a year ago: Ottawa invites you to start the OAS process rolling when you turn 65. See the “Related Articles” links at the bottom of this blog for some articles on this.)

In any case, my latest MoneySense Retired Money column goes into my (mixed) feelings about reaching this milestone. You can retrieve the full column by clicking on the highlighted headline: I’ve just turned 65: Here’s how I’m transitioning into Retirement.

Regular readers of this site or my books will know I see Retirement as a gradual process rather than a one-time sudden event more likely to generate what Mike Drak and I call “Sudden Retirement Syndrome.” My contraction for Financial Independence (Findependence, coined in the title of my financial novel, Findependence Day) is not meant to be synonymous with full-stop Retirement. Shortly after I left my last full-time journalism job four years ago (almost to the day!), I was happy to co-author a book with Mike and go with his chosen title, Victory Lap Retirement.

Four years into my “Victory Lap”

So I’ve been on my Victory Lap for four years now. That doesn’t mean 65 isn’t a significant milestone: as it tacks on another (albeit modest) stream of income, it means I can slow down a bit, if it’s possible to slow down when you’re running a website like this with daily content.

I described in an earlier piece in the FP how I am still working “some semblance” of a 40-hour week, although a good third of that time consists of errands or activities like Yoga or going to the gym, all the subject of the Younger Next Year 2018 Facebook group that a group of us launched late in 2017. Younger Next Year is a New York Times bestselling book that has been around for years but didn’t come to my attention until late in 2017 when regular Hub contributor Doug Dahmer gave me a copy.

The Hub’s subsequent review in the last post of the year led to the creation of the Facebook group, with the lead taken by Vicki Peuckert Cook, who is based in Rochester, but who I hope to meet this weekend for the infamous OAS party at our home in Toronto. For more on the genesis of the group, read member Fritz Gilbert’s blog republished on the Hub late in March: Do you want to be younger in 2018 than in 2017?

The group has already attracted more than 450 members on both sides of the border, including the co-author of the book, Chris Crowley, and his coauthor on Thinner This Year, Jennifer Sacheck.

Certainly the 6-day a week regime recommended in Younger Next Year is more doable if you’re retired or semi-retired/Findependent. Most of the Facebook group appears to be in that category, although there are a few dedicated younger folk still juggling full-time careers with raising a family and doing what they can on the exercise/nutrition front.

Continue Reading…