Retirement Roundup or Why I Won’t be Free at 55 Unless It’s for Lunch on Friday

As the RRSP frenzy has calmed for another 10 months, it’s time to consider the second R in that acronym: Retirement. In past posts, I’ve discussed the need to account for your personal rate of inflation when budgeting for retirement and what you need to budget for the long term costs of maintaining a house. I’ve been reading a lot of “Financial Facelifts,” “Family Finance,” and “Monday Makeovers” many of which are about retirement planning. The comments on these personal financial profiles lead me to investigate What Does It Really Cost to Eat for a Month? That will be another important factor in our retirement budgeting.

Then I went clicking through the internet looking for more retirement news. Here’s some of what I found:

Retire Happy gives a simple way to estimate how much CPP you will receive based on how many years you have paid in the maximum annual contribution at http://retirehappy.ca/how-much-will-you-get-from-canada/ . Some of the early comments also make for excellent reading.

Boomer at Boomer and Echo helps you Create a Retirement Income Plan.

Michael James on Money has done the math and determined that for some low-income seniors it’s actually best to collapse an RRSP all in one year rather than take it out slowly through a RIF. Read why at Handling RRSPs and RRIFs for Low-Income Seniors.

Jane at The Money Puzzle passes on some anecdotes about how people reacted in What Can Happen If You Receive an Early Inheritance. For sure some of these people should have made better choices.

The Blunt Bean Counter works the numbers to prove that for almost everyone who can afford to contribute to an RRSP the tax benefits make it worth while in The RRSP Hullabaloo.

Big Cajun Man explains in CPP Splitting a Different Process that pension sharing doesn’t mean the same thing when you’re talking CPP as when you’re talking income taxes and why it matters.

StatsCan reviewed retirement and found some interesting trends including an increase of 2 years in the average age of retirement for workers in 2009 compared with workers in 1998. Check it out to find out what that average age was.

Lunch, anyone?
I won’t be able to retire at 55, but if you do and you want to take me out to lunch, please send me an email!

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2 thoughts on “Retirement Roundup or Why I Won’t be Free at 55 Unless It’s for Lunch on Friday

  1. Wow! Someone actually read one of my posts and mentioned it on their blog.

    Thank you.

    Money brings out the worst in people and inheritances make them lose their minds.

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