Ken Pockele, retired secondary school teacher, walks along the golf course near his home in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., on Oct. 14.Nick Iwanyshyn
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Ken Pockele, 67, retired in June, 2009 just before his 54th birthday after working for more than 30 years as a secondary school teacher.
“I had some health issues in the years leading up to my retirement, which made me think more about how I wanted to spend my days,” he says in the Globe’s latest Tales from the Golden Age feature. “It certainly made the decision to retire much easier.”
The first few years were spent rebuilding the family cottage on Muskoka Lake, making it more liveable for longer term enjoyment. Mr. Pockele remains active playing golf and hanging out with his grandchild.
“As far as my age goes, I don’t see myself as 67; I still think I’m 39. I get a lot of energy from my wife, who is the same age, and very active,” he says.
Read the full interview here.
A retired couple wanted out of the stock market. Then, a bank fumbled their account transfer
In the time it took for their accounts to be transferred from one investing arm of a big bank to another, Katherine Kane and her husband lost an estimated $13,667, Globe personal finance columnist Rob Carrick writes.
Moving the four accounts from the robo-adviser RBC InvestEase to the online brokerage RBC Direct Investing last spring took about four weeks, a period in which both stocks and bonds fell in price. Ms. Kane sought compensation for the losses from Royal Bank of Canada, which offered a $1,000 account credit to each spouse in what it called a goodwill gesture.
The offer was reluctantly accepted this week, but Ms. Kane remains unhappy with how the bank handled the transfer. “You don’t waste a month’s time when you’re dealing with people’s money,” she said.
Read the full article here
Reverse mortgage holders are feeling the pinch
It’s never a great time to be an older cash-poor homeowner. But now is an exceptionally bad time, Robert McLister writes for the Globe.
Seniors who can’t make ends meet are not only watching their cost of living jump, their home value is falling and their debt burdens are surging.
Increasingly, distressed retirees are looking to reverse mortgages as a way out. That’s where you borrow up to 55 per cent of your home value, depending on your age, location, existing financing and property type, and no payments are made until you move out or die. Problem is, reverse mortgage rates are at their highest in well over a decade.
Read the full article here
Can this retired couple afford to up their spending and still have enough saved for assisted living?
Eleanor, 60, retired three years ago with a government pension. Her husband, Rowan, 59, quit working a couple of years earlier with no pension plan. They have some savings, a mortgage-free home and a rental property that generates positive cash flow of about $30,000 a year.
Eleanor’s defined benefit pension pays $77,330 a year, indexed to inflation, including a bridge benefit of $13,840 that will end when she turns 65. The couple have a 16-year-old son and an adult daughter with children of her own.
“We own our own condo in Toronto and we are approved for a home equity line of credit for $485,000, to buy a cottage,” Eleanor writes. “We’re still looking for the right one.”
“Our main question is about the most efficient way to draw down our savings and enjoy travel with our family – and hopefully, a family cottage – while we are still healthy and able to do so,” she writes.
“Based on family history, we expect one or both of us will be less mobile starting at age 80 or 85,” she adds. They wonder how much of their savings they can draw down while still preserving enough for assisted living later in life. Among their long-term goals is lending funds or gifting property to their children. Their retirement spending goal is $118,000 a year after tax.
In the latest Financial Facelift column, Warren MacKenzie, head of financial planning at Optimize Wealth Management, looks at Eleanor and Rowan’s situation.
In case you missed it:
How retirement helped an Ontario woman go from being time-poor to more spontaneous
Carolyn Young, 62, of Grand Bend, Ont. retired in April, 2021, after a career at Western University in London, Ont., mostly in the continuing studies department.
“It was very rewarding and fulfilling, but then COVID hit and all the programs had to move online. It was a lot of hard work making the adjustment,” says Ms. Young in the latest Tales from the Golden Age feature in the Globe. “I had planned to work until age 65, but like many people in higher education, I started to run out of steam.”
She took some part-time contract work for about another year, and may take on more contracts in future, but is content with retirement so far. “I’m keeping busy doing volunteer work, taking trips and spending more time with my kids and grandkids,” she says.
Read the full story here, including how Ms. Young and her husband are coping with inflation and why she finds retirement so freeing.
Ask Sixty Five
Question:
I just read the answer in a recent Globe and Mail Retirement newsletter about whether there is tax involved or not in the gifts we give to our kids. My question is: What about gifts coming to me from my kids? Will I be taxed? I am 70 and retired. Many thanks in advance for your answer.
We asked Jamie Golombek, managing director of tax and estate planning at CIBC Private Wealth in Toronto, to answer this one. (He provided the answer to the last question on gifting, which can be found here).
Good news! Your kids can give you a tax-free gift of any amount whenever they want. It’s not reportable on your tax return. If, however, your kids give you property or stocks that have appreciated in value, that would be considered a deemed disposition in their hands and they would have to pay capital gains tax on the transfer.
Have a question about money or lifestyle topics for seniors? E-mail us at sixtyfive@globeandmail.com and we will find experts and answer your questions in future newsletters.