Troy Brooks, pictured with his motorbike at Belcarra Regional Park near Port Moody, B.C., has taken long road trips since retiring, and focused on hobbies such as woodworking and playing guitar.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
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Troy Brooks, of Port Moody, B.C., retired in June, 2023, at 59, after more than 30 years in the computer graphics and animation industry. His last role was as the general manager of an animation studio in Vancouver. “A very good friend of mine in the industry died a month before I retired, and my brother-in-law died a few months before that,” says Brooks, in this Tales from the Golden Age article.
Both had cancer and they were a few years younger than Brooks. “I’ve also lost other friends my age or younger over the past decade. It puts life into perspective.”
Brooks enjoyed his work but says he felt there wasn’t much more he needed to accomplish “and there were other things I wanted to do with my life. I got ‘packaged out’ as part of a broader industry downsizing, which worked well for me.”
He adds that his wife has shifted to working part-time at a small private Montessori school, which she finds very rewarding.
Retirement for Brooks began with a trip to Africa with his wife and daughter. He spent the rest of the summer and fall riding his motorcycle throughout the Pacific Northwest. “When winter came, I found myself a bit disoriented,” he says. “I doom-scrolled a lot, which wasn’t very healthy. Instead, I try focusing more on my hobbies and interests, such as woodworking, playing guitar and ukulele, and working out with a trainer twice weekly to keep physically active.”
He labels these mostly as individual pursuits. What he says he’s found difficult is finding activities that include working and problem-solving with others the way he used to do at his job. He often fills this gap by staying connected with industry friends, including regularly meeting them for coffee or lunch. “I’m also trying new things in retirement to get me out of the house,” he says, including an art class, and he’s looking at volunteering somewhere such as Habitat for Humanity, where he can work with people and use his hands.
“My wife and I are financially prepared for retirement,” he says. “The last few years of my career were financially rewarding, so we’ve been able to load up our RRSPs and TFSAs and pay off the mortgage and other debt.” They’ve also reviewed their retirement plan with a financial advisor and plan to live primarily off their investments for the next decade and defer the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security benefits until they’re 70.
“I worry about another big market disruption and want to insulate our portfolio to ensure that we can really enjoy the next decade or so when we hope to be healthy and have the energy to travel and go on adventures.”
Read the full article here.
Are you a Canadian retiree interested in discussing what life is like now that you’ve stopped working? The Globe is looking for people to participate in its Tales from the Golden Age feature, which examines the personal and financial realities of retirement. If you’re interested in being interviewed for this feature and agree to use your full name and have a photo taken, please e-mail us at: goldenageglobe@gmail.com. Please include a few details about how you saved and invested for retirement and what your life is like now.
Can Kai and Sandra get back on track after five years living on a financial ‘shoestring?’
Spending five years overseas doing volunteer work “getting by on a shoestring” has set Kai and Sandra back financially. Now they wonder if they can catch up with their savings, help their two children financially, pay off the two mortgages on their principal residence and retire in comfort.
Kai is 54, Sandra is 56. He works two jobs in the sports field earning $125,000 a year while she works in education earning $110,000 a year. Their children, both in their early 20s, are living at home.
“We’re back in Canada, our retirement savings are well behind, we have one daughter in university and one entering the work force – along with a mortgage we’re still managing,” Kai writes in an e-mail.
“We need to save, pay down our mortgage and get things back on track so we can retire, or semi-retire, soon,” Kai writes. They’d like to spend more time at “our humble cottage in northern Ontario,” which needs winterizing. They’d like to spend winters in the Caribbean.
Sandra asks if she should buy back the years of pension she lost while she was on leave. They ask as well if they can afford to “hand off the house” – and their mortgage debt – to their children at some point.
Their retirement spending goal is $96,000 a year after tax.
In this Financial Facelift, Jeff Ryall, an investment counsellor with Cardinal Capital Management in Winnipeg, takes a look at Kai and Sandra’s situation. Mr. Ryall holds both the certified financial planner and the chartered financial analyst designations.
Want a free financial facelift? E-mail finfacelift@gmail.com.
Business owners should plan ahead for life in retirement
“I remember my first job,” writes Tim Cestnick, in this Tax Matters article. “I worked for my father, who was a small-business owner. My Dad said to me one day: ‘Tim, there are 35 million people in this country. Fifteen-million retirees, 8.5-million students, 10.4-million government workers, and one-million in the armed forces. That leaves 100,000 people to do the work. Oh yeah, then there are 85,000 in the hospital and 14,998 in prison. That leaves two people – you and me. And you’re not pulling your weight. So get working.’”
Cestnick’s father worked hard as a business owner, but he also planned for life in retirement.
Here, Cestnick shares the key things business owners need to do to prepare for a healthy financial future.
In case you missed it
How financial behaviour can reveal early signs of cognitive decline
Recent research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Georgetown University suggests that memory disorders such as dementia show up in credit scores and payment delinquencies years before diagnosis, reports Alison MacAlpine, in this Investing article. If financial behaviour is an early sign of cognitive decline, she asks, can advisors play a role in early detection to protect their clients’ finances and even their quality of life?
Early diagnosis enables early intervention that can help people with dementia stay healthy and independent for as long as possible, says Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Sinai Health and the University Health Network, and director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing at Toronto Metropolitan University.
The challenge is that more than two-thirds of “community-dwelling older adults” who have dementia haven’t been diagnosed formally, he says. “There are a lot of people out there who are living with dementia years before they actually get a formal diagnosis, and some people never get diagnosed.”
Dr. Sinha sees patients who have missed more than a bill payment or two in his practice. They may be at the point of being evicted because they haven’t been paying their rent, or their power has been cut off, or their phone has been disconnected.
It’s those “subtle higher-order tasks” that are affected, he says. “If one was to appreciate what’s happening better, or what’s getting in the way, [one] can more easily put in safeguards and other mechanisms.”
Read the full article here.
Home co-ownership can cause estate-planning havoc
As more Canadians buy houses with family members or friends for affordability reasons, advisors say a concrete plan is needed in case one of the homeowners on the title passes away, writes Globe Advisor reporter Deanne Gage.
Drafting a co-ownership agreement is the first step, says Christine Van Cauwenberghe, head of financial planning at IG Wealth Management in Winnipeg.
She offers the example of a multigenerational home in which two parents own a house with their adult daughter. When one parent dies, who receives their equity portion? And when both parents have passed, does the daughter receive the full equity, or is it divided among other children who weren’t part of the housing arrangement?
“There are endless possibilities,” she says. “All property owners should understand the intended outcome in the case of a death.”
Matt Trotta, vice-president of tax, retirement and estate planning at CI Global Asset Management in Calgary, says estate planning with multiple owners on a property has been a growing area of his practice. In general, property is held in two ways – joint tenancy or tenants in common.
In a joint tenancy, two or more people own an undivided interest in a property. This means that when one person dies, their interest goes to the surviving joint tenant(s) and not to the deceased’s estate, Mr. Trotta says. Going this route, which is the most common for spouses, allows the other owners to bypass probate when one owner dies.
Read the full article here.
For more from Globe Advisor, visit our homepage.
Retirement Q & A
Q: My wife and I are in our late 70s and have three non-registered investment accounts. Both names are on all three accounts. On one account my wife is the contributor; on the second account I am the contributor; and on the third, we have each contributed 50 per cent. What happens when one of us dies? Does the account of the dead spouse get rolled over to the surviving spouse?
We asked Janet Gray, an advice-only Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) with Money Coaches Canada, to answer this one.
A: Great question. Your three non-registered accounts are considered jointly owned (or also called joint accounts) because both of your names are on the accounts. This means that you each hold title (ownership) to the entire asset. At the death of one of the owners, the other owner becomes the sole owner. The asset therefore does not form part of the deceased’s estate and will avoid probate.
While the joint owners are alive, taxes on jointly held non-registered investments are paid according to the percentage of money each spouse originally put into the account. For instance, if spouse A contributed 75 per cent and spouse B 25 per cent, they would pay taxes on their joint investment earnings in the same percentages.
For accounting and tax purposes, it’s important to keep detailed records of which joint owner contributed how much. Joint tax slips will show both account owners’ names but not percentages. The taxpayer is responsible for claiming the proportional share of income earned on each of the tax returns.
At the death of one of the joint owners, the deceased is no longer an account owner and it now belongs to the surviving spouse. When the surviving spouse dies, the money that was from the first spouse then becomes part of the surviving spouse’s estate and any probate tax may apply.
To help with estate planning, it’s important to confirm the definition of ‘joint.’ It might mean Joint with Right of Survivorship (JWROS) or it might mean Joint Tenants in Common. With a JWROS account, each person named on the account is a legal owner.
And it’s also important to confirm the type of ‘Ownership.’ There can be ‘Legal’ owners or ‘Beneficial’ owners. Simply because someone’s name appears on an account, doesn’t necessarily mean they also have the right to use, enjoy, or personally benefit from the investments in the account. They may be a “legal owner” but not have a beneficial interest in the account’s assets. A beneficial right of survivorship generally exists where the joint owners are spouses or common-law partners. In that case, when one of the owners dies, the surviving owner typically becomes the sole legal and beneficial owner of the assets in the account by operation of law without any of the assets passing through the deceased owner’s estate.
For more clarity and to be sure the outcomes are suitable to your wishes and situation, it’s best to speak to an experienced estate and tax lawyer.
Have a question about money or lifestyle topics for seniors? E-mail us at sixtyfive@globeandmail.com and we will find experts and answer your questions in future newsletters. Interested in more stories about retirement? Sixty Five aims to inspire Canadians to live their best lives, confidently and securely. Sign up for our weekly Retirement newsletter.
