I’m 65, and my wife is 58. We’re both healthy and working, with a total income of $260K (each earning $130K). Our TFSAs are maxed out, my RRSP is full and regularly contributed to, and my wife has $130K of unused contribution room in her RRSP, though she contributes the maximum yearly. We have a $270K mortgage on our home with a 1.6% interest rate, set to renew in 28 months. We also have an $80K unregistered account for emergencies. Our jobs are stable, and I plan to work for at least five... What would you do ..read more

I have a company pension plan (RPP) that allows me to contribute up to 18% of my salary, with the company adding an additional 5%. If I maximize my contributions, the total will be 22%. So what ever I contribute to my RPP it will be consider as RRSP (since it is before tax and one type of pension scheme) This contribution will reduce my eligible RRSP stack (18%) for next year. Here’s my situation: I have an unused RRSP room of $30,000 up to the year 2023, which I can utilize before... RRSP contribution question ..read more

Estate Executor Problems Here's the story so far: Last parent died January 2023. Estate consisted of three assets 1-House/cottage (gifted in trust to executor before death) 2-Stocks 3-House/cottage contents and car. Will states to liquidate assets and divide equally to the beneficiaries. The beneficiary living closest to the parent is the executor. In the following six or so months (cannot give exact dates as there has been no financial statements from executor) 1-Executor sold... dilly dally dictator devastavit executor ..read more

I've seen many interviews with Lyn Alden and really enjoyed her knowledge. It turns out she has written a book recently released in August 2023: Broken Money: Why Our Financial System is Failing Us and How We Can Make it Better It's a big book of 538 pages. I wanted to borrow it at my library, but it turns out they don't have it yet. Usually they have pretty much every book I want to read, as it's a huge library owning nearly 4 millions books and documents, so I've requested them to... Book - Broken Money by Lyn Alden ..read more

When I compare my costs today to just a few years ago, due to inflation I am getting an extra $7500 in costs per year just in food, utilities, property tax, insurance and cable/internet. I have tried getting these costs down but I can assure you I have the lowest cost providers. In some cases like property tax we have had 10%+ annual increases and there is nothing I can do about it. So if one takes that $7500 value and apply a 33X multiple (for a 3% SWR) we now need another $250,000 saved... Inflation and Required Retirement Savings ..read more

I moved mortgage from RBC to nesto. RBC was reporting my mortgage to TransUnion, whereas I found out that nesto doesn't. Oh, and I also closed a LoC with RBC which I never used. So my credit score dropped from 875 ("Excellent", max is 900) to 819 ("Very good", for scores between 790 and 832). The report shows that my mortgage is paid (because RBC's mortgage was paid) and it states "no open mortgage" as a major impact on my credit score. It dropped from 875 to 846 to 819, not sure if it'll... Mortgage not reported on credit score, should I care ..read more

I've seen that wealth simple offers 4% on cash accounts if you have 100k with them. I've used them for my taxes and I've considered moving over 1 TFSA and my chequing account from TD/TDDI. It's an easy 4% off of money I have sitting there anyway and you get a prepaid mastercard to use as your debit card, any cash withdrawl fees from ATM's are reimbursed by WS. I'm trying to understand the drawbacks to doing this. Sometimes I take out fairly large sums of money (like $8k) for a purchase... Wealth Simple - Cash Account ..read more

Hello Everyone , Hope you are all doing well . I had a bit of time and money on my hands lately and been trying to pick some investments for long term ,no hurry to cash out ,generate income etc. It is actually for my daughter who is 21 and have room available in her TFSA plus RRSP. Just curious what your picks would be ,Mine would be MSFT ,APPL ,AMZN but looking for some options we may not own yet ..read more

The OAS benefit increased $5 for the quarterly cost of living increase to a maximum of $718.33 per month. A retired couple can collect a maximum OAS benefit of $1436.66 a month. The benefit has increased significantly during the past few years of inflation. The monthly benefit was only $570 when I turned 65 ..read more

CP and CN rail have now locked out workers effective today. I do not know any details of the negociations nor what the sticking points are. Estimates show the rail stoppage could cost 341 million per day. As much of our goods are shipped by rail I expect if this is not resolved quickly we will see huge economic impact. I know this is not unheard of and there tends to be strikes/lockouts at least once per decade. That said a prolonged strike/lockout will shut down/severly limit the... CP and CN Rail lockout - Financial Impact ..read more