Are we on track to retire at age 50? + MORE May 21st

Retiring at age 50 can be a tall order as you are financing a retirement lifestyle that could be 40+ years long. Heather and Dereck hope to accomplish this in just 9 years. Is their savings plan enough?
The current situation
Heather and Dereck Irwin are both 41 and live in Woodstock, Ont. Heather is a project coordinator working with kids with special needs earnings $50,000 annually, while Dereck is an electrician earning $120,000 a year. Not only does this couple have stressful jobs, Dereck’s job requires a lot of shift work, which makes spending time together difficult. The Irwins, who don’t have any kids, are true do-it-yourselfers. “We cook everything ourselves, I fix our vehicles myself and we do all the renovations and maintenance on our home,” says Dereck. “We just like it that way.”
Right now, the couple has a home valued at $350,000 with a $225,000 mortgage on it. They also have RRSPs and TFSAs that total $468,000 plus they will receive pension benefits. Their goal is to retire at age 50 with $60,000 gross per year in income from their portfolio, taking into account 2% inflation annually…

Stella & Mat
Stiver-Balla
AGE: 28 and 32
PLACE: Toronto
TFSA TOTAL: $77,210
STRATEGY: Growth and blue-chip stocks

Me and my TFSA
Four years ago was an important time for Mat Stiver-Balla. In 2013 he married his wife Stella, 28, and he began investing in his TFSA.
Like most young investors, Stiver-Balla started his TFSA without really knowing much about investing. The money sat in cash in his account for the first two years until his day, a mortgage broker, started giving him a few pointers on what to do with the account. That was the push Stiver-Bella need to start following the stock markets in newspapers and magazines. “I started teaching myself how to read balance sheets and I started picking stocks based on what numbers I thought looked good,” says Stiver-Balla. It was enough to make him more comfortable with stocks and investing.
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He credits MoneySense with his ability to read a balance sheet—especially when it came to understanding key stock metrics and ratios like price-to-earning and price-to-book ratios…

Home Capital Group reported a slight uptick in the amount in its savings accounts as of Thursday, a sign the alternative mortgage lender may have staunched its bleeding.