As retirement draws closer, you begin to anticipate and plan the things you would like to do, when you would like to do them and how big you plan to do them. Each of these events, which range from your specific retirement date, the vacations you plan to take, to the gifts you would like to give others is a choice, but how do you know if your choices will be good or bad? Experience has taught us good choices lead to good outcomes and bad choices, to bad outcomes.

At Retirement Navigator, our goal is to give you the confidence that all your choices will have good outcomes. Our approach takes the perspective of a designer solving a problem with more unknown’s than knowns as opposed to that of a mathematician. Together,  we build prototypes of your desired retirement life, assess the outcomes, and make refinements with each iteration.

While most retirement plans are designed with money choices dictating the lifestyle choices available to you, our plans use lifestyle choices to drive money choices. Examples of money choices that should be driven by your retirement lifestyle choices include:

1. How much longer do you need to work?
2. When should you start to collect your Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security?
3. What is the best way to withdraw from savings accounts, how much? When? From where?
4. How do you ensure that you take full advantage of all income splitting?
5. Can all your lifestyle choices be funded?
6. Will you leave an estate? If so, have you structured your affairs to ensure the largest beneficiary is not Canada Revenue Agency?

Once we have a clear appreciation of the retirement you are designing, as Retirement Income Specialists, we turn to our suite of powerful planning tools to build you a retirement plan that outlines the specific money choices that allow you to get the most life from the money you have.