by Owen | Aug 10, 2020 | Financial Planning, Insurance And Risk Management, Investment Planning, Retirement Planning
The 4% Rule is a common personal finance rule. It suggests that a retiree can spend 4% of their initial retirement portfolio each year, adjusted for inflation, and have a reasonably high chance of success.
When talking about the 4% Rule, a retirement period is considered a “success” when the retiree doesn’t run out of money by the end of retirement. Any investment balance above $0 is considered as success, even if that’s just $1.
By using this safe withdrawal rate, the success rate of a retirement plan could be as high 90%-95%+. This means that during 5%-10% of historical periods a retiree could run out of money if faced with the same sequence of returns in the future.
But… this also means that during 90%-95% of historical periods a retiree will end up with money left over, sometimes a lot of money.
This is the unspoken downside of the 4% Rule. By aiming for a high success rate of 90%-95% we’re often building plans for the very worst-case scenarios. By using the 4% Rule we’re planning for a very poor sequence of returns in early retirement, we’re planning for below average returns for 5, 10, 15+ year periods, or we’re planning for high inflation that is significantly above the average.
But what happens if we get average returns, average inflation, and steady growth year over year… well… we could die with millions in the bank.
No one wants to be “the richest person in the graveyard”, so what can be done about the fact that 90%-95% of the time the 4% Rule will leave us with lots and lots of money in late retirement?
There are a couple options to consider but first, let’s look at the typical “success rate” analysis that we do in a retirement plan and what “success” actually means.
by Owen | Aug 3, 2020 | Financial Planning, Government Programs, Income, Retirement Planning, Tax Planning
The Guaranteed Income Supplement is a government benefit program focused on low-income retirees. It is based on income and is available to low-income Old Age Security (OAS) recipients. It is a non-taxable benefit meant to protect seniors from low levels of retirement income.
The GIS benefit provides income support to over 2.1 million retirees. It provides support to nearly 1 in 3 seniors in Canada. In a given year the Guaranteed Income Supplement will provide over $13 billion in benefits!
GIS is one of the most generous benefits in Canada and because of this it also comes with some extremely high “clawback” rates. GIS benefits get reduced as household income increases. This reduction is called a “clawback” rate because it “claws back” benefits from higher income households. At a certain income level, depending on the household situation, all benefits will be clawed back.
This “clawback” rate is important because it can reach 50% to 75%. This makes low-income retirement planning an important consideration. Not all income triggers the GIS clawback so it’s important to understand where retirement income is coming from and how GIS will be affected. With the average GIS recipient only receiving 54% of the maximum these clawbacks have a big impact.
In this post we’ll review what the Guaranteed Income Supplement is, how it works, how much you could receive, and how the GIS “clawback” works. We’ll also cover some common types of retirement income and how they can affect GIS benefits.
by Owen | Jul 27, 2020 | Behavioral Finance, Financial Goals, Financial Planning, Investment Planning
A lot of focus gets placed on the BIG personal finance decisions, buying a home, using a TFSA versus an RRSP, which investments to use etc etc. But really, it’s the small decisions, the ones we make daily, weekly, monthly, these are the decisions that have the largest impact on our personal finances.
When we look at someone’s financial journey, it’s typically not made up of leaps and bounds but rather small steps and steady progress. There typically isn’t one defining moment that leads to someone’s wealth. It’s usually a repeated process of saving and investing.
Like a snowball, wealth usually starts small, but it builds quickly. It generates more and more momentum as it gets larger until it becomes something unstoppable.
To build a wealth snowball is simple. It requires commitment in the beginning, with new contributions made on a regular basis. It requires growth, those contributions need to be invested and any investment income needs to be reinvested. And it requires time, time for the wealth snowball to gain momentum.
Given those three factors, at some point in the future, the wealth snowball will be driven not by contributions but by growth. New contributions will be dwarfed by annual investment growth and the snowball will grow faster and faster.
The important thing when building a wealth snowball is to stay on track, ensure spending is less than income, ensure the leftover gets invested regularly, and keep focused on the long-term because it takes a bit of time before growth overtakes contributions.
by Owen | Jul 13, 2020 | Budgeting, Financial Goals, Financial Planning, RESP/Kids Education, Saving Money
Children are expensive. That’s something we can all appreciate. But just how expensive are they? What is the cost of raising a child? What is the cost of raising 2, 3, 4+ children?
For new parents, or soon-to-be parents, the cost of raising a child can be a real guessing game. As parents to two young children, my wife and I felt the same uncertainty when we started our family. We had to guess about how much it would cost and what kind of expenses we needed to anticipate.
We anticipated some costs, especially in the first few years, but we never took the time to look at the total cost of raising a child, we just didn’t know where to begin.
As many parents can attest to, raising a child is expensive. There are many costs when raising a child. From diapers to daycare, food to formula, the total cost of raising a child is shockingly large.
The estimated cost of raising a child in Canada is $203,550! Wow!
Plus, this estimate doesn’t even include educations savings like RESP contributions. Add in enough RESP contributions to max out the $7,200 government grant and you’re at a total cost of $239,550 to raise a child in Canada!!!
With each child costing nearly a quarter million dollars, anticipating these costs becomes a very important part of a financial plan. It’s also important to realize this this quarter million is very front loaded, with a lot of the cost coming in the early years. For new families this is important.
When building a plan, we want to anticipate these costs on a year-by-year basis, we want to understand when these expenses will occur, and we want to plan for possible cash flow issues down the road.
We also want to help new parents understand that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, because for parents with 1, 2, or 3+ young children, the cost of daycare and diapers can feel pretty overwhelming.
Lastly, we also want to anticipate government benefits and tax credits, both can help offset a large percentage of the cost of raising a child. This is an important part of a family plan and can be worth thousands of dollars per year, so we don’t want to ignore them.
by Owen | Jul 6, 2020 | Behavioral Finance, Buying A Home, Down Payment, Financial Planning, Income, Investment Planning, Retirement Planning
Demographic trends can be extremely interesting. Demographic trends can influence a lot of things, they can impact voting and public policy, they can impact consumer trends, they can impact the consumption of goods and services.
The interesting thing about demographic trends is that they’re (somewhat) predictable. The way our population looks today will directly translate to how it looks in the future. Factors like immigration and advances in health care can change these trends slightly, but in general, the way people age is fairly predictable.
What is interesting about demographics is that as people age they do things differently, their behavior changes, their lifestyle changes, they consume different things.
Over the last 60+ years there have been two huge demographic waves, the first was the “baby boomers” and the second was their “echo”. These two groups are very noticeable when looking at population by age group. Demographic charts clearly show two huge population waves with troughs in-between.
Now, I’d like to preface this post with the fact that I hate predictions and forecasts. In my opinion, a good financial plan shouldn’t rely on predictions or forecasts to be successful. A good financial plan will prepare for various future events and still have a high chance of success. It’s important to anticipate possible risks and how they may impact a financial plan.
Typically, when we talk about risk we talk about investment risk and inflation rate risk. A good plan will still be successful even with changing investment returns and changing inflation rates. But what about real estate values? What about housing?
For two groups of people, the variability in real estate values should be a big concern when doing a financial plan. One group is real estate investors, people with rental properties that make up a large % of their assets. The second group is future downsizers, people who have made downsizing to a smaller home a key part of their future financial plan.
For these two groups of people it’s important to understand that real estate growth rates can vary and this creates risk. Simply assuming inflation, or inflation + xx%, is not a great strategy.
In this post we’ll look at how demographics may impact future housing demand and why a good financial plan should be prepared for different rates of real estate appreciation.
by Owen | Jun 22, 2020 | Financial Planning, Insurance And Risk Management
Critical illness insurance is a unique type of insurance that will provide a lump-sum payment in the event of a critical illness. What is unique about critical illness insurance versus other types of insurance is that it is VERY specific about what is covered.
Unlike disability insurance, or life insurance, a critical illness policy has some very specific criteria that need to be met before benefits are paid out. While many people may feel that their illness is critical, a critical illness policy doesn’t actually cover many common illnesses but only specific “critical” illnesses.
The idea behind critical illness is good. It can provide financial support during a difficult period of time. A time that may see a decrease in income or an increase in expenses. It helps provide financial support during an unexpected and potentially life changing period.
But despite the benefits we’ve personally decided not to purchase a critical illness policy. We made this decision for a number of different reasons, which I’ll touch on at the end of the post, but first let’s review what a critical illness policy is and what it covers.
Warning: This is not insurance advice. These are my own opinions about critical illness insurance and shouldn’t be considered insurance advice. If you’re unsure if critical illness insurance may benefit you then you should speak with an independent insurance advisor.
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