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The right ingredients for retirement
Television chef Christine Cushing doesn't like risky investments, even though she built her career by taking chances
THERESA EBDEN
Given a deadline and a kitchen loaded with fancy tools, Christine Cushing is as daring as they come.
But when it comes to saving for her dream of early retirement in 21 years, the cooking show star and author of Dish It Out and Fearless in the Kitchen has always felt better playing it safe.
It all began at age 16, when Ms. Cushing's mother encouraged her to put aside $50 a week from her first job as a cashier at the local Dominion grocer. It went into the Templeton Growth Fund, in an unregistered account.
"That ended up swelling to a fairly sizable amount," she recalls of her grocery cashier savings.
Years later, those good savings habits have prevailed. With few exceptions in recent years, she has managed to maximize her RRSP contribution room, either through saving or temporary borrowing. That's because her teenaged saving years taught her that a bit of patience can lead to great things.
And so it was that at age 19, while living at home with her family, and studying linguistics at the University of Toronto, Ms. Cushing began to understand how to make money work for her. Using knowledge gleaned from a real estate course, her savings were used to purchase a house as an investment property. Her tenants' rent paid the mortgage, and when she sold a year later, the house had risen $10,000 in value. Her profits went straight into a yet-to-be-built condo near the Don Valley Parkway and Eglinton Avenue West, which appreciated $30,000 in a year, prompting her to sell again.
Having switched from language studies to complete a food and beverage management program at George Brown College - all the while working at the Four Seasons Hotel - Ms. Cushing realized the $27,000 savings was her ticket to the big-time: namely, a nine-month course at the famous Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne in Paris.
"I bet the jackpot on the cooking school," laughs the host of Christine Cushing: Cook With Me on the Food Network Canada. "It changed my life."
Following her return from Paris in 1990, Ms. Cushing's savings were down to zero. Her parents helped her buy a condo, and she eventually landed in the kitchen of the upscale Toronto restaurant Scaramouche, working under executive chef Keith Froggett. For two years, with the help of her then-partner, she built up her finances while creating pastries and cakes for the city's well-heeled elite.
"I wasn't really earning a whole lot of money," she recalls. "I would try to max out my RRSPs, I would pay off credit cards monthly with few exceptions. I was always in the habit of paying off debts."
But in a job that earned less than $30,000 annually in a clockwork-like kitchen that was always busy, Ms. Cushing grew restless. Despite her respect for her coworkers, she felt she needed to move on.
"I remember the day thinking, 'Now what do I do?' I did a 10-year look down the road and I saw myself still working there. No pension, no benefits. I decided to change the course to see what I could do on my own," she says.
Her dream was to become a self-employed food stylist - the person whose job is to make a dish look natural, tempting and delicious for publications and commercials.
Her boss, Mr. Froggett, kindly tried to talk some sense into her, she recalls.
"I remember the chef saying to me, 'What are you going to do? Where are you going to go?' I remember thinking, 'Oh man, he's right.' But truthfully I never looked back," she says. "I never made less money than when I worked for someone else."
She doggedly worked catering jobs, developed recipes, all the while pursuing food styling. In 1994, she landed a series of contracts with Gusto magazine, then a quarterly food publication. By then she was also teaching cooking classes.
Over the next four years, her RRSP grew - it was into four figures by then.
"My whole philosophy, with investing and working, was to diversify. I never wanted to have all my eggs in one basket," she says, adding that her wide range of contracts meant that "every little boat took me safely to the harbour for the next opportunity."
Eventually, the magical day came in 1998 when she did a three-day cooking stint for KitchenAid at the Good Food Festival in Toronto, and a producer from the Life Network approached her. What followed was a dizzying pace of shows and the beginning steps toward her first cookbook. The earnings - and RRSP savings - were steady.
But you have to break a few nest eggs to make an omelette. And around this time, like many Canadians, Ms. Cushing's savings got scrambled in the tech boom.
By then, her investment-savvy partner (he had an MBA) had helped her build up her RRSP, but she remained invested in the tech sector through the subsequent crash. What had been just barely a six-figure portfolio was reduced to $60,000.
Instead of starting from scratch with new investments, Ms. Cushing held on to her funds and for the most part, they rose again over the years.
"I had funds - otherwise we would have been smoked," she says. Among those she held on to were some RBC technology funds, some broader Canadian equity funds, RBC O'Shaughnessy Canadian Equity, a Dow index fund and a money market fund.
More recently, Ms. Cushing has set up her retirement plan with a friend who works at CIBC Wood Gundy who understands the specific challenges of her career.
"The business of TV is unstable - my contract is year by year, and I really don't know what's going to happen," she says.
This sounds modest, given her seven seasons in TV so far, including hosting Christine Cushing Live for four seasons and, previously, three seasons of Dish It Out on the Life Network. But as time wore on, she felt her eggs were yet again in too few baskets.
The "diversification bug" sparked the decision to fashion her name into a food brand, called Pure by Christine Cushing. She now has an olive oil being sold in supermarkets, and it will be followed by three flavours of tomato sauce.
"I wanted to develop something that can work even in my absence," she says. As well, she adds, the door is open for consultation work down the road, as well as the "strong possibility of international television opportunities."
The start-up costs for marketing, design and a website meant that last year she was able to use up only half of her RRSP contribution room.
Even so, today she feels on track financially. She bought a mortgaged home in North Toronto two years ago, and owns her Jeep Liberty outright.
As for her savings, her registered portfolio is once again back into six figures but isn't enough to retire on, she says.
"From now on my goal is to max out my RRSP," she says. "It is hard to do."
To help her along, her Wood Gundy adviser plays a bigger role in her investment choices.
"I trust his opinion on a lot of the funds and the reasons why he likes them," says Ms. Cushing, who describes her appetite for risk as being "on the low end of moderate" and says she's realizing she must take more chances in order to grow her portfolio.
She came to this conclusion after the cost of incorporating three years ago made her more aware of the need to make the most of her income and savings.
Currently, she holds the following funds: Clarington Global Equity, CI Signature Select Canadian, Dynamic Power Balanced, and Bissett Canadian Balanced.
Specifically, her investments break down to 42 per cent in global equities, 35 per cent in Canadian equities, 16 per cent in bonds and 7 per cent in cash.
"At this point I realize I have to get more aggressive," she says. "I've had a few great years in TV, I've spent money to grow a brand. I see this as the sweet years. But I don't want to feel 21 years from now that I'm still having to make it work. I feel the money should be working for me."
Theresa Ebden is an associate producer for Report on Business TV.
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