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Canadian Dream: Free at 45
One Canadian's dream to retire at 45. Topics include: early retirement, investing, savings, spending, and happiness.
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Retirement and Risk
2008-04-02 14:38:14
It seems to me one of the biggest issues around planning retirement is the complete fear that grips people while they do it. I see people putting safety factor on safety factor while assuming the worst case at every corner. Why? They are terrified of taking a risk and running out of [...] ...
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Snap
2008-04-01 14:10:08
That’s it, my mind has finally snapped. I’ve decided I just don’t care about working anymore I’m going to sell everything I own and buy a small section of land in the middle of no where (for cheap of course) and retire right after our second baby is born. I’ll live a happy yet meager [...] ...
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A Earth Evening in Review
2008-03-31 14:32:35
Well last Saturday night I had a very interesting evening. My wife was reading about Earth Hour and thought it would be a fun time. I personally thought it would be a joke, don’t turn your lights on for an hour? Come on I’ve already hack down my energy bills to the [...] ...
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How much do you need to Retire - Version 3 - Part V
2008-03-28 14:15:23
Alright after four long days we finally pull off this information together to see if I can retire at 45 (at least in theory). For your reference here are links to the rest of series:
Part I - Finding out your spending in retirement
Part II - Government Benefits
Part III - Company Pensions
Part IV - Retirement [...] ...
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How much do you need to Retire - Version 3 - Part IV
2008-03-27 13:59:14
So far this week we have looked at your yearly spending in retirement (Part I), government programs (Part II) and company pension plans (Part III). Today we are going to look at RRSP’s, taxable investment accounts and Tax Free Saving Accounts (TFSA).
1) RRSP
All of accounts are very similar in the fact they can be just [...] ...
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How much do you need to Retire - Version 3 - Part III
2008-03-26 13:47:00
Welcome to Part III where we are going to look at pension plans. For your reference in Part I we calculated your yearly spending in retirement, while in Part II we covered government benefits.
Company Pension Plans
Each pension plan is unique to some degree, so it is impossible for me to cover every detail of [...] ...
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How much do you need to Retire - Version 3 - Part II
2008-03-25 13:25:43
In Part I I walked you through how to come up with a yearly income requirement for retirement in today’s dollars. Now today we are going to look at government benefits.
In Canada there are a few different programs you can tap into during your retirement. The most common programs people have to account for is [...] ...
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How much do you need to Retire - Version 3- Part I
2008-03-24 13:21:22
Well it’s time again for me to overhaul my calculations on how much I need to retire. You might ask: why? The answer is because some significant chances had happen to my plan since the last time I did my calculations. Also I want to round out some more information in some [...] ...
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Life Insurance - Revised
2008-03-19 16:58:13
Well after a death in my extended family this week, our second baby on the way in early May and the renewal notice of my life insurance policy I’ve revised our life insurance needs to $500,000 each for me and my wife.
Why the $500,000? My math goes something like this:
Pay off remaining mortgage $142,000
Stay at [...] ...
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Early Retirement Extreme
2008-03-18 13:20:13
Well after doing a guest post over at Early Retirement Extreme. Jacob was kind enough to do a guest post for me as well. For those of you not familiar with the blog, it’s kind of like my dream to retire early on speed…he became financially independent in five years.
Rule 1. You do not talk [...] ...
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Book Reivew: Living Well on a Shoestring
2008-03-17 13:07:33
I passed Living Well on a Shoestring from the editors of Yankee magazine while looking for books at my library the other day so I picked it up and gave it a chance. Overall the book does have lots of ideas on how to save money for all sorts of different things. I [...] ...
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My Frugal Diet
2008-03-14 14:10:08
Well after all the questions and comments on my food bill this month I thought I would expand the discussion a bit with a tale of my frugal diet.
So to keep things fair and to not impress anyone anyone here is my meals this week (Keep in mind my wife’s diet is a little [...] ...
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What $227.22 Will Buy for Food
2008-03-13 13:39:21
I know I’ve mention before our food bills are typically under $300 for a month to feed three people. So I thought perhaps it would be useful for me to post what I bought during one of big shopping trips at the start of the month. I should point out I run a [...] ...
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The Working Poor Summary
2008-03-12 14:03:40
In yesterday’s comments a few people touch on the fact that life long people who are poor have often lost hope that things will get better. Their motivation dies and they are now stuck in that life. I know that happens, I’ve seen it with people I know. It’s hard to watch and do nothing [...] ...
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Being Working Poor - My Story
2008-03-11 13:31:48
As we continue along this week discussing the working poor I thought I would share a little more of my own history of a time when I would have been considered poor.
It all began the year I graduated university and got married. You see neither my wife or I were able to get jobs [...] ...
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Book Review: Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting by in America
2008-03-10 13:45:02
This post is the first of series this week looking at the working poor. This idea of this series isn’t to lay blame at anyone, but rather provide ideas on what you can do if you are in this situation. It’s an unfortunate fact that many people spend most of their lives in [...] ...
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An Engineer’s View of Retirement
2008-03-07 13:55:33
Inspired by Larry MacDonald’s recent post about bloggers and their day jobs. I’m presenting a little humorous view of how an engineer would approach retirement.
Step 1: Define the Problem
I rather be doing any of the following more than working for a living till I turn 65: reading, cooking, gardening, home improvement, writing, playing board games, [...] ...
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My Top Three Investment Mistakes
2008-03-06 13:10:13
I had to laugh yesterday about Mike’s post on Quest for Four Pillars where he suggests that perhaps I don’t have any investing mistakes to share. So in a effort to prove the fact that indeed I’m still mortal, I hereby present my top three investment mistakes.
Well if you recall this post. I [...] ...
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Interview with Trevor
2008-03-05 13:37:50
After Trevor’s question to me on yesterday’s post I happen to check out his personal blog which listed his profession as: wanderer. So being the overly curious person that I am I sent him a note wondering if I could do an interview with him. He agreed, so here is the blog’s first regular [...] ...
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Reader’s Question #9
2008-03-04 12:58:41
I really do like getting emails with questions from people. Some things are certainly specific enough that they can’t really be brought up in the blog. Yet here is one from a reader, Trevor, I thought I would share.
“I was just wondering when you started saving. “
My response went something like this:
I’m not [...] ...
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Book Review: Rich Dad, Poor Dad
2008-03-03 13:07:20
Ok, I’ll admit I have been avoiding reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Why? Because in the beginning when I started reading about personal finance there was too much negative comments on blogs about the book. Yet over time I also come across some good comments, so I thought I [...] ...
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Intoducing Tools & Upcoming Posts
2008-03-01 15:10:56
Well after dragging my heals on this for far too long I got a request the other day to put up a Tools page to provide useful links for anyone wanting to retire early. So I sat down last night and dug up most of my most loved links. You will find [...] ...
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Net Worth Update - Feb 2008
2008-02-29 14:01:02
Well it is time again to update my net worth. Please recall I discount my house market value by 8% to cover closing and moving costs if I ever decide to move.
Assets
House $350,000
RRSP $13,600
LIRA $11,300
Pension $6600
Wife’s RRSP $7700
Wife’s Investment Account $7900
My Investment Account $4500
High Interest Savings Account $5400
Debt
Mortgage $142,400
HELOC $2900
Therefore my net worth now [...] ...
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Juggling the Mortgage, RRSP’s and TFSA’s
2008-02-28 13:24:02
Alright, I’m still wrapping my head around the idea of Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSA) and what they mean to us in terms of our planning. So I don’t expect to get this all right in the first go, so here’s the deal. I’ll provide my first pass on what these mean to my plans [...] ...
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What the Hell is a TFSA?
2008-02-27 13:23:37
I suppose I’m like most people right now. I woke up to this new world where everything has changed and no one told me. Ah, federal budgets gotta love them.
So unless you’ve been avoiding the news and have yet to read a single blog you might have come across the term of Tax [...] ...
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Double, Double, Boil and Trouble
2008-02-26 12:59:14
Clink. Clink. Clink. Can you hear that? It’s the sound of people bleeding money in Regina. Why do I think people are bleeding money? Well because our insane little real estate market just finished jumping off a cliff the other day for me.
You see a couple blocks from here a home [...] ...
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Book Review: The Simple Life
2008-02-25 13:24:00
The Simple Life edited by Larry Roth was very useful book to borrow from my local library, because it provides a series of essays by various people on their thoughts on simplicity, frugality and living well.
It in a single book manages to teach someone a rather difficult concept at first that there really is no [...] ...
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The Water War Goes Public
2008-02-23 19:45:39
As if writing about my goals to reduce my water bill on this blog wasn’t public enough. I’m now in the National Post about it. Read here.
I should point out Karen got a few things a little wrong, but it was a short interview, so I can’t blame her. To clarify: my current [...] ...
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How Can A Person Be ‘Debt Free’ with a 300K Mortgage?
2008-02-22 12:57:10
Can you you smell the rant coming by this post’s title? If so, good for you.
I have to get this off my chest because I keep seeing in all over the place on blogs and discussion forums. You get people paying off their consumer debts and go around calling themselves ‘debt free’ when [...] ...
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Social Acceptance Spending
2008-02-21 13:27:10
It occurs to me that we as a society tend to have a problem. We spend our money because other people want us to. We spend it on a lunch out we didn’t really want or a drink with a friend regardless of if we could afford it. We spend it for social acceptance.
The issue [...] ...
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