How are FIRE adherents making out? + MORE May 23rd

Retirement planning getting you down? There are always smart ways to plan the financial aspects of your retirement.
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Online “finfluencers” grow up + MORE Jul 4th

If you’re someone near or at retirement, has a column like the one you’re now reading ever “finfluenced” any of your financial decisions? Increasingly, many Canadian investors are turning to a new generation of voices online, a trend that regulators are starting to watch more closely.  .... More »
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Is AI the ultimate retirement hack? Jun 13th

There’s an interesting new book just published called I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything. The author is Joanna Stern, who was a personal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal for 12 years. As the subtitle of her book reveals, she spent a year using ar.... More »
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Stock news: Couche-Tard and BlackBerry post gains, Metro flags strike impact Jun 27th

Here’s a round-up of news for Canadian investors this week. Couche-Tard BlackBerry Metro Featured RRSP Accounts featured EQ Bank Build your retirement savings with 1.50% intere.... More »
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Segregated funds are no tax panacea + MORE Jun 6th

Ask a Planner I attended a financial planning seminar and the presenter said you’re taxed so high on RRSPs when you die that your kids are only going to get half of it, which I already kind of knew. So, if you put it into these segregated funds, then you don’t pay tax. Should I be doing.... More »
What are reasonable long-term financial planning assumptions? Retirement projections are only as reasonable as the assumptions behind them. If your inflation, investment return, or life expectancy estimates are unrealistic, your financial plan may give you a false sense of security.

Studies often show that investors are overly optimistic about future rates of return. This is particularly true coming off a strong showing for stocks like we have seen over the past year. 

The total return for the S&P/TSX Composite Index over the last 12 months has been 34%. The S&P 500, in Canadian dollars, has returned 24%. Over the past decade, annualized returns for these indices were 13% and 16% respectively—but financial planners are not counting on the same success going forward. 

The FP Canada Standards Council and Institute of Financial Planning update their Projection Assumption Guidelines each April. These guidelines apply to Certified Financial Planners (CFPs) and Québec Planificateur financiers (Pl. Fin.). They are worth considering for Canadians who are making assumptions about their own financial futures…

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How are FIRE adherents making out?In the increasingly specialized world of financial blogging, there’s a subgenre of so-called “FIRE” experts, who expound on the acronym FIRE. FIRE stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. Some proponents are in their 40s or 50s and practising what they preach, having either reached financial independence or are almost there. We describe some of them in this column.  

My own semi-retirement project, FindependenceHub.com, often republishes FIRE-related blogs. Recently, I ran one from the MyOwnAdvisor blog by Ottawa-based Mark Seed, who announced on his site in April that he had finally retired in his early 50s, after 17 years of blogging about it. For this Retired Money column, I interviewed Seed on Google Meet to learn how he did it.  

For most FIRE gurus mentioned here, the term “retirement” means no longer being a full-time salaried employee with all that entails: commuting to an office, bosses, meetings, and so on. The emphasis is on the Financial Independence aspect of FIRE more than outright Retiring Early…

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