Thank you for joining the waitlist!
You’re on the list for early access!
We will contact you via email when we’re ready for you to start your self-directed financial plan. In the mean time here is a quick preview…
Check out our latest blog posts…
The 4% Rule Is Too Low!
The “4% Rule” is a common rule in personal finance. It’s a basic rule of thumb that suggests you can withdraw 4% from a well diversified portfolio and have a reasonably high chance of having money left over in 30-years.
Like any personal finance rule, it’s a bit of an oversimplification of a rule that contains many nuances. This rule is based on a famous study called “The Trinity Study”. That study was built on top of the work of Bill Bengen who used historical stock/bond/inflation rates to determine that a retiree can withdraw 4% of their initial portfolio value, adjusted for inflation each year, and have a reasonably high chance of success.
This is an amazing piece of work and has enabled many individuals to formulate their own retirement plans. But for Canadians it might be too low & too pessimistic.
When using the 4% rule it’s important to remember that “success” in the Trinity Study and in Bengen’s analysis means that there is at least $1 left after 30-years. It does not mean that investment principal will be left untouched. It’s very possible that a retiree could end up with just $1 in their account after 30-years and that would be considered success.
The nice thing about the 4% rule is that it’s pretty easy to find your target “retirement number”. All you have to do is estimate your annual retirement spending (including tax!) and multiplying by 25. If I wanted to retire with $50k/year before tax, according to the 4 percent rule, I would need $1,250,000 (25x $50,000/year)
The issue with the 4% withdrawal rule is that for Canadians it’s too low, it’s too pessimistic, and it leads people to forget about other types of retirement income and perhaps save too much. If you’re retiring in your 50’s to early 60’s then you could start withdrawing at a higher rate and still be successful.
(Disclaimer: Everyone’s situation is different. What works for one retiree may not work for another. Make sure to review your retirement plans with an advice-only financial planner to ensure your plan is successful)
Retirees in their 50’s or early 60’s will be eligible for two large government benefits just a few years after retirement. CPP and OAS can easily provide 25%+ of a retirees annual spending. Ignoring these benefits will mean you might save too much! Aiming for a portfolio that is 25x your annual spending is overkill because it doesn’t take into account these large government benefits.
For many retirees in their 50’s and early 60’s they can withdrawal MORE than 4% from their portfolio at the beginning of retirement. This is because a few years down the road they’ll be eligible for CPP and OAS. Once these benefits kick in their withdrawal rate will be much, much lower.
But, the earlier you retire the closer to the 4 percent withdrawal rate you need to be. Retiring early means you need to have closer to 25x your annual spending to bridge the gap between early retirement and government benefits. Bridging a 5-year gap between age 55, when retirement starts, and age 60, the earliest CPP can begin, is much different than retiring at 45 and waiting 15+ years for CPP.
Not only does retiring early create a larger gap between your retirement date and CPP/OAS but there are other risks too. One of the biggest risks is a change to OAS.
OAS is funded through government revenue. This means it’s not guaranteed the same way CPP is guaranteed. In fact, we’ve already seen OAS change twice in the last decade. OAS briefly went from age 65 to age 67 and then back again. This didn’t affect people who were already 55 but for those 55 and under they saw their earliest OAS date pushed later and later.
Still, for anyone in their early 50’s to early 60’s it’s reasonable to assume CPP and OAS will be available in its current form (but nothing is 100% guaranteed!)
Let’s look at two scenarios, one where retirement starts at age 55 and the initial withdrawal rate is above the “4% safe withdrawal rate”, and a second scenario where retirement starts at age 45 with the same withdrawal rate. For each scenario we’ll look at the success rate (how likely it is that we won’t run out of money before age 100).
The 24-Hour Budget
Doing something for a month is hard, doing something for a week is difficult, but doing something for 24hrs…. well that’s not so bad, it’s achievable, it’s realistic.
When trying to do something difficult, something huge, something never done before, we’re often given the advice that you should “eat an elephant one bite at a time”.
To overcome a big challenge you need to break down your problem into smaller, more manageable pieces.
Budgeting isn’t different…
Sticking to a budget for a month can be hard, super hard. Sticking to a budget for a week is hard, but not impossible. Sticking to a budget for 24hrs…. that’s achievable.
It’s HARD to control your spending day-in-day-out for a month straight but with the daily budget you only have to control your spending for the next 24hrs. After 24hrs your budget resets and you have a new amount to spend for the next day.
That’s the beauty of a 24hr budget. Once the money is gone it doesn’t take a month to come back. With a daily budget you get to spend a new chunk of money tomorrow!
The 24hr budget is like an allowance except instead of $1/week you’re getting $20/$30/$40 per day! This is how you create a 24hr budget…
Retirement Income: Start Drawdown With RRSP, Non-Registered or TFSA First?
When it comes to generating an income in retirement things can get very confusing, very fast. During your working years you probably have one, maybe two, sources of income, typically a paycheck that arrives every 2-weeks, in retirement however you will likely have 5-10 different income sources coming every month.
A typical retiree will have both CPP and OAS payments in retirement (unless you’re extremely high-income and your OAS is entirely clawed back), plus a typical retiree will also have some investments in an RRSP, TFSA and non-registered account to draw from. Add to that pension payments from a defined benefit pension or maybe a defined contribution pension that was converted into a LIRA/LIF, and we’re up to 6 income sources already. Then we have to add additional payments from government benefits like the federal GST/HST credit, Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), and provincial benefit programs like the Trillium benefit in Ontario. Some of these arrive monthly, some quarterly, some just once per year.
And if that wasn’t confusing enough, each income source has its own tax and benefit claw back rules too.
For example, RRSP, CPP, OAS and pension income are all taxed at 100% of your marginal tax rate, but capital gains are taxed at 50% your marginal tax rate, and at some income levels dividend income has a negative tax rate!
Then you have TFSA withdrawals which have no tax at all, and most government benefits are tax-free as well!
All those different income sources naturally create a lot of different strategies to on how to drawdown your retirement assets in the most efficient manner…
Some people believe that drawing down their RRSPs first is the best strategy. Others believe drawing down non-registered assets first makes more sense. There might even be a few people out there who think that drawing down their TFSA first is best.
But the best way to create retirement income and drawdown your retirement assets is actually to mix them all together. Like an expert baker, the key is to mix retirement income sources in just the right proportions to get the best result. The tricky thing is that the exact proportions will depend on your specific situation, how much you have in each account, and how much retirement income you’re trying to create each year.
How much is planning your retirement income worth? How about $100,000 or more in reduced income tax! Even low- and mid-income seniors can benefit from strategic retirement income planning to help them avoid GIS claw backs, which can easily be worth $1,000’s per year.
At the end of this post we’ll show you 7 different withdrawal scenarios’. The difference between the best and the worst is over $328,490 in today’s dollars.
First, a bit of background on why we want to mix retirement income…