The Budget that Never Was

Posted by Canadian Dream on March 23, 2011

Typically I do a little coverage on the federal budget pointing out either the main things that will affect your bottom line or some of the little covered items.  This year I’m taking a different stance since all three opposition parties have indicated that they are not supporting the budget.  Thus this budget will never go into law as it current stands and we are just a debate and vote away from an election. Yet at the same time there is this interesting idea that this budget could also be the Conservative election platform.   So what is a poor blogger to do?

Well that is going to be easy.  Keep my nose out of it.  I don’t have a clue what the other parties will be offering in an election platform, so there isn’t much point worrying about comparing something to nothing for now.  Instead I will point out an important piece of advice…if you don’t like how things are going, go vote.  If you don’t understand something, find out and then go vote.  If you don’t like any of the options, pick your least offensive and go vote.  Why?

Because in a democracy a vote is basically your only weapon of choice.  It’s a one chance every four years once in awhile to voice what matters most to you.  Do you favour tax cuts to corporations or social programs or debt reduction?  Have your say and remember to vote.  Now I will put my little soap box back in the corner of the room.

Calculating and Recalculating

Posted by Dave on March 22, 2011

This is a guest post by Dave, who is also looking to retire no later than 45, but unlike Tim has no kids and doesn’t want any.  Dave is from Ontario and is working towards his CGA certification.

Every once in a while I will spend a considerable amount of time (to the point where I think my wife thinks I’ve become obsessed) researching various interests.  In the past year or so I have researched the following topics to death: my diet, different gambling topics, investing strategies, and optimal exercise routines.  Over the past couple of weeks, I have spent some time playing around with retirement calculators (mostly firecalc), trying to figure out (again) my end retirement goals.

I realized three things when I did these calculations:

1) The amount that I need to retire is not really all that high:  If I set my spending level to $25,000 (the approximate level that I spend currently), I should easily be able to retire by age 45 with a buffer of money available if I need it to an age of 103 (just in case I live significantly longer than average).  If I had no other inflow of cash coming in during retirement, I would need about $685,000 to maintain the lifestyle I currently lead (adjusted for inflation).

2) Other money coming in significantly reduces the amount I need to have invested: For example, the additional inflow of CPP and my company pension plan significantly reduces  the amount that I actually have to have save for retirement.  According to the government of Canada, average CPP payments in 2010 were $502 – even at half that amount, my spouse and I would receive approximately $6000 per year combined (I think that half is conservative).  Add in around $1000 per month of my expected company pension plan and I don’t really need a large amount of money from age 65 on.  For security’s sake, I won’t really count these pension amounts in (as a buffer to possible spending increases in old-age), but realistically I should have a significant portfolio going into my later years.

3) I’m still on track with my current plan: I find it useful to have periodic checks on my plan every year or so.  Between those periods I don’t really even think about what I’m doing money-wise as it is all automatic.  It is nice to know that I am still on pace to retire when I want to and I should be fine when I get to that point.

My plans could of course change significantly in the next few years, I might find a career that is significantly more enjoyable, but pays a lot less.  Yet if it was my choice, prior to changing jobs I would probably run the numbers again and find out what impact this change in pay would have on my future plans.

Have you ever done these sort of retirement calculation checks?  If so, do you have any idea whether you will have over/under saved for retirement?

Free at 45

Posted by Canadian Dream on March 21, 2011

Free at 45 - Cover

Finally after two years, the book is done!  Free at 45: How to Retire Early and Happy won’t be officially released until next week, but I thought I owed all of you as a reader of this blog first shot at getting a copy.

You have a few options on how you want to do that:

• You can preorder a paper copy which I will then ship out as soon as I get the first batch of books (which is already on the way).
• Or you can download the ebook version of this book in just a few minutes.

Regardless on what you choose go to this page to make you decision or to check out a free preview of the book.

Now onto the most popular questions I’ve had so far regarding the book:

What’s the book about?

The book is basically an extension of everything I have learned in the last four years doing research and interviewing retirees on planning and living an early retirement.  In short, it shows a person what exactly is involved in planning an early retirement and how it doesn’t have to take anywhere near a million dollars to do it.  Also it deals with making sure you are happy while you do all of this.

So why would anyone want to buy the book when they can just read your blog for free?

The book is inspired by the blog, but it isn’t the blog.  A blog has the limitation of if you write too long of a post you will lose your audience.  So while there is a lot of overlap of concepts between both, the book is a much more in depth look at most of the concepts discussed on the blog and a few additional areas that I’ve never been able to cover on the blog due to length.  The book also is much more organized and will save someone looking through over the 1000+ posts on the blog.

So is that you on the cover?

*Laugh* No! Sorry that is not my butt, while I was in Hawaii recently I didn’t bother taking a suit to get that photo.  It’s just one of a list of images my designer/editor sent me when we were figuring out what the cover should look like.

Let me know if you have any other questions in the comments and I will try to answer.