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1 week ago | 
findependencehub.com | Jonathan Chevreau
My latest MoneySense Retired Money column has just been published and covers something that was a new experience for me: starting and managing a RRIF or Registered Retirement Income Fund. You can find the full column by clicking on the highlighted headline: How to make sure you have enough money to fund your RRIF withdrawals.
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1 week ago | 
moneysense.ca | Jonathan Chevreau
However, Allan Small, senior investment advisor with the Allan Small Financial Group, has a different view. “Obviously [you] have to make sure that there’s enough money in the portfolio that’s liquid to make the payment,” says Small. “I don’t believe in setting aside a bunch of money, which has to sit there so you can take the RRIF payments from it. I believe in investing as much as possible to take advantage of the market’s upswing—especially [those] over the last few years.
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1 month ago | 
moneysense.ca | Jonathan Chevreau
News flash: At some point health will preclude working for a living, and/or you’ll no longer be able to count on finding someone willing to employ you (or be a paying client if you’re self-employed). This is a problem. As 36% of women surveyed aged 55 to 64 have saved nothing at all, and 22% of men. Sadly, workplace pensions are a distant sixth place for sources of future retirement income.
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1 month ago | 
findependencehub.com | Jonathan Chevreau
My latest MoneySense Retired Money column has just been published. You can find it by clicking on the highlighted text here: Why “unretirement” may be the fate of so many Canadians. Even before the Tariffs threats emerged under Trump 2.0, Canadian seniors were starting to find the economic uncertainty and rising living costs to be unmanageable. No surprise then that many seniors approaching Retirement Age are delaying their exit from the workforce.
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Dec 18, 2024 | 
moneysense.ca | Jonathan Chevreau
Don’t forget, there will be additional provincial taxes on top of the federal haul, also indexed to inflation at various provincial rates. Since this Retired Money column is meant for retirees and those near retirement, we’ll skip the material on CPP contributions, which can be found in the Golombek column linked above. What is relevant for those in the retirement zone is the higher threshold on OAS. In 2025, according to Canada.ca, OAS begins to get clawed back for taxable income of $90,997.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
findependencehub.com | Jonathan Chevreau
My latest MoneySense Retired Money column is a bit of a departure in that its focus is on 57-year old blogger and YouTuber Alain Guillot, who came to Canada from Columbia with nothing but entrepreneurial gumption and a dream of being part of the North America depicted on TV at home. For the full MoneySense column, click on this headline: The first $100,000 is the hardest to save for newcomers. The re-election of Donald Trump is almost certain to make Immigration an even more contentious issue.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
moneysense.ca | Jonathan Chevreau
As I am myself the child of British immigrants, I am naturally sympathetic to those brave or desperate enough to leave their homes to find opportunities in North America. Which is one reason that over the past year, I’ve been corresponding with an interesting blogger and former financial advisor, Alain Guillot. He occasionally republishes his blog posts on my site, Findependence Hub. His own blog is called simply AlainGuillot.com.
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Nov 15, 2024 | 
findependencehub.com | Jonathan Chevreau
It’s been two years since Elon Musk acquired the former Twitter, now X. That led to a steady X0dus (sorry!) of hundreds of thousands or millions of formerly loyal users to new platforms like Mastodon and, the following summer, Facebook’s Threads. Since last week’s shocking re-election of Donald Trump, another wave of X users has left for bluer pastures, this time for BlueSky, founded in part by former X co-creator Jack Dorsey, and some venture capitalists.
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Nov 6, 2024 | 
findependencehub.com | Jonathan Chevreau
By now, there’s not much I can add to the ubiquitous media coverage of Donald Trump’s shocking imminent return to power. Since our “beat” here is Financial Independence I’ll spin this that way. A few weeks back we looked at a Franklin Templeton webinar on the investment implications of either a Harris or a Trump victory. See this blog I wrote on October 23rd, headlined Don’t mix politics and investing but financial community thinks a Trump victory more positive for stocks. You can say that again.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
findependencehub.com | Jonathan Chevreau
Hard to believe but Findependence Hub just turned 10 years old. We launched Financial Independence Hub on Nov. 03, 2014. Here is the very first post. You’ll note that for a long time, we self-referred with the short-hand “The Hub.” This was of course long before another site was launched a few years back also called The Hub. So we try NOT to refer to ourselves using that short form, as it may be confusing. However, the slogan still applies: North America’s Gateway to Financial Independence.
