Defined Benefit pension plans are required to use a funded ratio, also referred to as a solvency ratio, in determining whether the plan is sufficiently funded. This approach can also be used to assess the funding adequacy, or solvency, of your own retirement savings. What is...
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You have had it. You cannot stand even one more winter of shovelling snow or fearing the loss of your fingers and toes from frostbite. You are going to retire to Panama, or Malaysia, or Portugal, or… There are lots of lists on the internet...
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Bringing a new baby into your home is an exciting but anxiety-inducing time. There is so much change, especially if it is the first baby. There are also lots of financial implications. In retrospect, I’m not sure how we managed to accomplish it when we...
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Interest Rates and Borrowing, Including Mortgages In the last several months, we have begun to see home sales decrease and prices drop, largely due to an increase in interest rates. If you are planning to borrow money, whether for a mortgage or other purposes, this increase...
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I will admit to some trepidation in writing this blog post. Gordon Pape is one of the grand old men of investing in Canada. He has written a column for the Globe and Mail for more years than I can recall right now. However, like...
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“Don’t even think about it.” That’s what I would like to say to anybody who is drawn to these funds due to their prodigious tax-saving opportunities. When I was working at a discount brokerage, there seemed to be regular inquiries about these products from people who...
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I will admit to a bit of a love-hate relationship with life insurance. On the one hand, insurance is almost always appropriate to buy at some time in your life. On the other hand, as someone with a chronic health condition, kidney disease, I couldn’t...
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In my student days, I remember an ethics professor saying something to the effect of, “That which is not prohibited is permitted.” Of course, one pithy sentence does not exactly provide the full range of nuance that was elaborated on over the semesters that I...
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In years gone by, many people sought a job that would provide the proverbial “gold-plated” pension plan, by which was meant a defined benefit pension, what one might refer to as a “true” pension. That is, once you retired, you would get guaranteed, possibly inflation-protected,...
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Shortly after I turned 25, and was newly married, I discovered I had a chronic kidney disease that would almost certainly lead to kidney failure. Somehow kidney failure was delayed a lot longer than the prognosis originally indicated, but in 2014 my kidney function got...
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