If you’re one of the two-thirds of Canadian workers without the luxury of a company pension plan, the Saskatchewan Pension Plan (SPP) can bridge the gap and help you save towards retirement. For most retirees, government benefits such as CPP, OAS and GIS simply won’t be enough to sustain their lifestyle in retirement. Although there […]

If you’re an active member in a defined benefit pension plan, such as the one offered by HOOPP (Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan), pretty soon it will be that time of a year when you receive your annual pension statement of benefits. Your annual statement is like a snapshot of your pension benefits. It shows […]

There are two main types of pension plans in the workplace today: defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC). DB is the cream of the crop for workplace pension plans. DB pension plans guarantee workers a set amount of income in retirement based on a pension formula. DC pension plans on the other hand only […]

Contrary to popular beliefMortgage and Loan Calculator V7 Sean Cooper Financial Data Mortgage and Loan Calculator V7 Sean Cooper Graph , your mortgage doesn’t have to be a life sentence. You can pay off your mortgage sooner without taking on a second job.  In the last blog post I discussed How to Save for Retirement […]

Debating between saving for retirement or paying down your mortgage faster?  There’s a way to do both at once without having to alter your existing budget. The Total Wealth Approach The Total Wealth Approach is Chippingham Financial Group’s proprietary investment strategy to help address the entire financial life cycle of an individual.  They have spent […]

I’d like to start this post by dispelling a common myth: borrowing to invest is not a sin. We borrow for all sorts of things in life – homes, cars and university – but for some strange reason borrowing to invest is considered taboo. I’d like to show you how, when done properly, borrowing to […]

To paraphrase the great playwright, William Shakespeare: to annuitize or not to annuitize, that is the question. For the two-thirds of us without workplace pension plans, annuities can provide some much-needed income stability in retirement. The problem is many retirees are hesitant to annuitize their savings because annuities have gotten a bad rap over the […]

If you’ve been following the news headlines lately, you’d think we’re smack-dab in the middle of a retirement crisis. The facts don’t lie: only a third of us today have a workplace pension plan. For the rest of us, we’re left to fund our own retirement. While the low interest rate environment may be beneficial […]

Do you have a defined benefit pension plan at work? Consider yourself fortunate. Only one-third of employees have any pension plan (that includes defined benefit, defined contribution and group RRPSs). Today I’m going to explain how a defined benefit plan works, so what better way than to look at my company’s pension plan? I work […]

I attended the latest event hosted by the fine folks at MoneySense, Canada’s best-selling personal finance magazine. Dubbed “four hours that will change your financial future,” MoneySense Retire Rich 2014 more than lived up to the hype. Even though I already consider myself financially literate, I learned a thing or two and felt more motivated […]