Ontario loosening solvency requirements for defined benefit pensions + MORE May 20th

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…

Saving isn’t an option, it’s a must-do.

Ontario is changing rules on workplace defined benefit pensions, including considering them to be solvent when they are 85 per cent funded.
The provincial Liberal government announced today that it would introduce legislation in the fall to make that change and others that it says will help keep defined benefit pension plans sustainable.
Single-employer defined benefit plans currently require funding on a solvency basis if they are anything less than 100 per cent funded, but the government is planning to lower that level to 85 per cent.
That means if a pension plan is 85 per cent funded and is forced to wind up immediately, there would only be enough to pay 85 cents on the dollar to meet the plan’s obligations.
Employers would have five years to make special solvency payments to get back to 85 per cent if their plan falls below that threshold.
That move would give employers relief as defined benefit plans face challenges including historically low interest rates, but at the same time the government is also strengthening other employer pension obligations…

Many men and women think men are the better investors. They’re wrong.
After checking how 8 million of its customers did during 2016, Fidelity Investments found that women earned 6.4 per cent on their portfolios. Its male customers made slightly less: 6 per cent.
The difference in performance is small, and it’s always dangerous to make big generalizations out of small slices of data. But it slots in with other research that suggests women tend to take a longer-term view of investing.
They are more likely to buy and hold their investments, and they take fewer risks. Perhaps more importantly, the numbers put into sharp relief how women may be too pessimistic about their own abilities. And that’s a dangerous thing if it discourages them from investing for retirement or other goals.
“When women actually take the step of investing, they do a good job,” says Kathleen Murphy, president of personal investing at Fidelity. “It doesn’t surprise us, but I think it will surprise them…

The changes would reduce the amount of money that employers need to invest in plans that are currently undercapitalized