Top Three Retirement Moving Mistakes

Avoid These Retirement Relocating Mistakes

First Published Date: May 16, 2013 ADawnJournal.com

As you are not tied to any location once you are retired, it opens up endless possibilities to move to any place of your choice. However, jumping too conclusions too fast without considering a variety of things can cause lots of trouble. Here are some common things to consider before moving to your dream place.

Moving to An Unknown Place – Moving to a place where you don’t know anyone sounds like an adventure, but consider the drawbacks as well. You will be losing your support groups like friends and family, known health care providers, familiar stores, car mechanics, home contractors, and so on. In case of emergency, when you need someone to fix something or for other assistance, you will have a much tougher time getting the help you need right away.

Buying vs. Renting – Do not buy a new place in a new community without finding out more details and spending enough time at that location. If your new destination is near your current home, you can find out a lot more without living there physically. However, if it’s a place far away from your current location, it makes sense to rent for a while and experience how things are there without buying a place.

Don’t Forget These – There are many other things to consider before moving to a new place. Here are some of the most important things you need to check out: cost of living, climate, outdoor activities, indoor activities, what sorts of people live there, if it is a high-tax or low-tax area, how safe the neighbourhood is, how far it is from a major city, how far from an airport or a train station, what types of public transports available, and so on.

5 Retirement Mistakes To Avoid

Five Retirement Planning Mistakes

First Published Date : April 11, 2012

Unexpected global economic fluctuations and downturn have made Canadians rethink and reevaluate their retirement strategies. And in a time like this, a mistake can be irreversible and can go a long way. The best suggestion? Avoid mistakes in the first place. Today, I will look at some common mistakes to avoid.

Not Planning Early and Setting Goals – If you have just joined the workforce and happen to bump into this article – congratulations! A lot of us make the mistake to plan and set realistic goals early enough to achieve it. You should have a clear picture of when you want to retire, how you would like to retire, how much income you need to support yourself, where you would like to live, etc.

Investing and Diversifying too Conservatively – If you are too conservative, you may keep all your money, but it is almost guaranteed that you will lose out to inflation. Technology has brought so many modern day investment vehicles (one example is ETF) to regular investors these days, which was unimaginable just 5-10 years ago. You need several considerable investments with a moderate diversification.

Misunderstanding Expenses – Don’t make the mistake of overestimating or underestimating your retirement needs. Make a list of all your expenses and try living on that before your actual retirement. Keep in mind that some expenses will gradually drop out once you retire.

Misunderstanding Debt Management – Don’t look at debt management the traditional way. One simple example is paying off your mortgage or investment loans ASAP. If you have investment loans that earn you more than the interest you pay to carry the loan, it may not make sense to pay off investment loans or mortgage on an accelerated pace as you can earn more money if you use the extra payments towards investments that have higher returns.

Misunderstanding Tax Consequences – You can re-energize your retirement assets and income if you go through proper tax planning. Optimized, tax efficient income retirement assets will last a lot longer than those without proper tax planning.
The best way to handle all these I mentioned above is to educate yourself on various retirement aspects. Although retirement planning looks black and white on the surface, it is complicated and it is unlikely that you will know all the ins and outs by yourself. I always recommend consulting a retirement professional to discuss your unique situations.

How To Retire Early

Retiring Early

First Published Date: July 6, 2011 ADawnJournal.com

When you are thinking of retiring, there are many things you will want to do in order to retire early. Retiring early is very important because it gives you more time to enjoy your Golden Years, but you also need to make sure you have enough money for those Golden Years as well.

Naturally, the most important thing you can do is to start early in saving up for your retirement savings. You want to start early because not only will that help you weather any financial storms in life, it will allow you to save more money for a longer period of time. If you do not start early with saving for your retirement, there is little chance that you are going to be able to retire early.

Of course, starting early is only part of it, you need to also cut how much you spend. Remember, the less you spend, the more you save. The more you save, the earlier you can retire. It really is just that easy, so forget about getting that second car and look at getting some money into the bank instead. Do you need a big house? No, then go and put that money you would have spent on a large mortgage into the bank.

Start putting money into your retirement plans at work as soon as you can. Whether it is a Canada Pension Plan or IRA with the United States.

Investing is important if you want to retire early but it will do you no good to invest in risky ventures that could cost you all the money you have saved.

When you are younger, you can invest more aggressively because there is a greater amount of time to recoup any losses you suffer. However, as you age, make your investments safer and safer. Don’t be investing in junk bonds at the age of 50 because you may win big, but you could just as easily lose very big.

Mortgages cost a lot of money and the sooner you pay off your mortgage, the more money you can save each month. If your mortgage costs you $1,500 a month, paying it off will earn you $3,000 every two months, $30,000 every 20 months and by the time you reach five years, you will have saved $150,000.

Obviously, it is not always that easy to save for an early retirement but by starting sooner, spending less and being wise with your investments you could see yourself hitting your golden years at 50, instead of 65, giving you a lot of extra time to enjoy life before you have to slow things done because of old age.

Of course if you don’t do any of these things, you can always hope that you a rich uncle will pass away and leave you a vast fortune that you can retire on, but that is about as likely as winning the lottery.

Canada’s Best Places to Retire

Best Places to Retire in Canada

First Published Date : October 13, 2011 ADawnJournal.com

The answer to the question “where to retire in Canada?” may sound like an obvious one. However, let me disappoint you by saying that there is no straightforward answer. There are many factors that come into making a decision. You are different than anyone else and the factors you make your decision based on may be totally different than someone else’s.

Where you want to retire largely depends on what really matters to you. You need to do thorough research to come up with a place where you would like to live happily ever after. The advantage technology has brought to us is the Internet. You can research tons of websites on a variety of retirement related topics to help you with your quest to find the most suitable place for you. Today, I am going to mention some factors you need to consider and also we will go through Moneysense magazine’s Canada’s Best Places to Live list to help you make your retirement decision.

Factors Determining the Best Places to Retire

Here are some factors I can think of that you should be looking at before making your decision. However, there are possibly more factors you should research based on your individuality.

– Living costs and other expenses
– Safety, security, and stability
– Family
– Climate
– Does it offer seclusion or a city’s hustle and bustle
– A far-off place from your home or nearby location

Canada’s Best Places to Live

Every year, MoneySense Magazine publishes a list showing Canada’s best places to live. This list can be a helpful tool for your research as there are many cities have been researched based on affordability, prosperity, crime rates, health care, and so on. Here are the top 10 cities for 2011:

– Ottawa-Gatineau
– Victoria
– Burlington
– Kingston
– St. Albert
– Fredericton
– Brandon
– Edmonton
– Repentigny
– Winnipeg

Although this list can be very helpful, keep in mind that it was compiled eliminating cities and towns with populations less than 10,000 and it only looked at 180 cities and towns with populations more than 10,000.

Last Word

In searching for your best place to retire, do not count on any single source or list. A place may be the world’s best place to retire in terms of the factors the publisher is looking at. However, your own deciding factors may be very different than those presented, and that means a list showing the world’s best place to live may not mean anything from your own perspective. Research is key to finding your little heaven and keep researching until you find it. There are lots of retirement articles on A Dawn Journal as well and you can access them here: A Dawn Journal Retirement Articles

The World's Best Places to Retire

Top Retirement Places in the World

First Published Date: October 20, 2011 ADawnJournal.com

In searching for the best international top retirement places, I came across many reputable websites that publish their lists of annual best places to live abroad or overseas. Some of these websites are dedicated to retirement only. Some are personal finance or other types of websites, but they have a retirement section covering a variety of retirement topics. Instead of mentioning the world’s top retirement countries that change every year, I will give you a list of these sites so you can check updated lists and also try their variety of retirement articles.

International Living – International Living covers all aspects of international living such as living abroad, international real estate, travel, investments, and so on. Check their Where to Retire section for the latest best places to live list.

Top Retirements – Top Retirements provides a variety of retirement information. You will many top places to live lists on this site.

AARP – AARP is a non-profit, social organization for 50+ people. Its Best Place to Retire section has lots of best places to retire abroad articles and informative articles on individual countries.

Retiring Overseas – Although Retiring Overseas does not publish any top ten kind of lists, it has a variety of information on retiring in foreign countries.

Forbes – Financial website Forbes has a Retirement Section. However, it looks like they miscategorized these two best retirement places articles:

The Best Foreign retirement Havens and The 10 Best Retirement Havens.

Kiplinger – Personal Finance magazine Kiplinger’s Retirement section is worth checking.

If you are looking for more sources or sites, search on the Internet using these keyword phrases: “top retirement places,” “best places to retire in the world,” “retire overseas,” “retire abroad,” and so on. The Internet has made it possible to make an informed decision on picking one or a few countries across the globe without leaving the comfort of home.