RETIREMENT

Retirement planning is the cornerstone of all financial planning and no pre-retirement plan is complete without a retirement plan. Although generally called retirement planning, a better description is "financial independence planning" because that is really what we are planning for: the day when you can stop working and live off your capital and have it last the rest of your life. I generally tell people that we are trying to calculate when you could stop working if you choose to but you don't have to. If you continue to work after the point when you could stop, then you are simply increasing your cushion and your estate. Most people however are happy to stop working and look forward to playing golf, travel, or pursuing their hobbies or whatever pleases them. For more information, click on Tips for an Early Retirement and How Much Do I Need to Retire?. Both of these are information pieces from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario, of which I am a member. For a case study featuring retirement planning, click on CS#2 – Getting Ready for Retirement. For a case study featuring post-retirement planning and aging issues, click on CS#1 – Dealing With Aging.