retirement or life of crime?

If you are young, this might not concern you. But if you are young, this SHOULD concern you. I toss this out to see what others are thinking /doing.

Against the wise counsel of our investor guy, we have not managed to sock away 2.2 million in high yielding investments. On that advice of our investor guy we started out pinching pennies from a very skinny household income to set aside into a monthly RRSP contribution. Fast forward to now and...we are no better off despite the assurances that one day we will be. Maybe if we live to be 200. BUt so far we have lived through 3 pretty serious stock crashes that have seen our miniscule investments pretty much vanish into thin air.

Investor types like to tell you that if you had your money in a bank savings account, you wouldn't even be making the rate of inflation. True. BUt at least you'd still have the money,because you can wake up one morning after a tech stock crash and find a big fat zero where there used to be tens of thousands.

Most Canadians have little to no retirement savings and some Canadians have no work pension. We are the no pension gang and only enough in retirement savings for two bags of groceries. Hubby is in panic mode. We are talking about selling our kidneys on the black market. Or a life of criminal activity. Hubby is handy, I think he could hoist cars (and keep them here to part out, WRONG!) We are kicking around the idea of rental real estate, but with the price of real estate in BC and some horror stories of what it's like if you get bad renters, we are worried about our old age.

If you have farmed or worked for small industry with no pension plans, how do you all plan to retire? Or can you? According to the investment wisdom, we're toast.

Everyone I've ever talked to who is not an "investor" - that is, someone who invests other peoples' money for them, says to buy silver and gold. Even in the form of jewellry, etc., but stocks too. It's very reliable so I'm told. More so than boosting cars, especially given J's penchant for mid-80s models. Not sure of the resale value there.

We have no pension and no rrsp and with DH creeping quickly to the age of 50 its kind of scary. He is a bobcat operator and his knees are giving out, to top it off he has be diagnosed with COPD and Glaucoma. LOL it could be worse! My dream would be to have the farm paid off, I would rather invest in that nest egg.
Hopefully real estate in Sask. doesn't crash...LOL

I think most of us that are over..... ummmmm 45 think about retirement now. I took out my meager rrsps a couple years back. Now I am glad I did because I got the chance to spend it. I dont know what we are going to do for retirement. 6 years ago we moved to the Calgary area and have a mortgage that we know will never get paid off. We had hoped that when it came time to retire that it would be our retirement... we thought maybe sell it, pay off the mortgage and rent? buy smaller??? we didnt know, and we still dont know. The way the economy is going right now it dosent look good which ever way we look at it..... On the lighter side... we can always eat turkey !!!

Look at it this way, its not the cost of things going up, it's the value of money going down. Invest in self-sufficiency. And turkeys. There's going to be a lot of people who have thought of themselves as well off who may very well end up with nothing, and all those pensions some have paid into are invested somewhere too. It's not going to be fun becoming and being old while this correction is going on.

Once you get to that age ? sell everything that you don't need and move to a province that has a lower cost of living ? Around here there are so many Cagary people moveing to that when you ask them why ??? It's the best bang for the buck ! Most say that they pay off there new homes and still have money in the bank ! Sounds like a good plan to me .............although I am still years from that

Self sufficiency is good. But I worry that it's not food costs that are going to kill us. It's the fixed costs that we can do little to affect. Like house insurance, which is close to $2000 a year. Vehicle insurance. The dentist! The lawyer! THe plumber! It seems every single service we hire, we hire at MORE than Hubby's hourly wage. Except the girl who pours us coffee at Tim Horton's, SHE is still a good value.

I agree with FarmChiq that gold is a good investment. But at over $1800 an ounce, how many of us want to buy 20 ounces and see if it actually goes up antoher $100 an ounce which is about as much as it has to to see a profit. WHen you buy and sell gold, EVERYONE has their hand out for a cut! ANd what if it tanks? Then you're paying safety deposit box charges on a loss....but think of all the 24k jewelry you could make! And how much gold do you have to buy and how much does it have to go up in order to reitre? Lots and lots and lots!

I think the point of investing in metals is they tend to stay stable, so in comparison to most other things, they're a good place to hold and increase your investment, even if only a little.

how come no one is mentioning the sock under their bed???

As a young adult, I have to say it is a very scary world to be "grown up" in. On Vancouver Island, I don't actually know how any young person can make it and ever be debt free. House prices are absolutely redonkulous, for crappy little run down houses needing a ton of fixing up. Jobs are at an all time low, regardless of what the government tells you. I can't even pay your average rent (for a somewhat reasonable but not "state of the art" place, more so a place where the toilet flushes and you don't have to coexist with copious amount of rodents) with a minimum wage job. I am putting myself through nursing school right now, but when I look at the job postings on VIHA (our health authority), there are a whole lot of "casual", "temporary", and "part time" jobs. Really? Who can make it on that? How can a person spend $450, 000 for the average single family home in Victoria, no land, and only work "part time" or "temporary"? I'm of the mindset that unless you live on the island and bought your house 20 years ago for $50, 000, you are never going to be debt free living here.

Nope, not me. As soon as I have my degree I'm off to the land of open skies, off to Alberta. They have full time jobs, higher starting wages, and I can buy an acreage within an hour drive of the hospital in Edmonton for half the price of an average single family home in Victoria.

It's scary thinking about how we are ever going to save to retire, save for a newer, safer vehicle, save for a house, save for kids, bla bla bla. Yes our goal is to be self sufficient as possible, but still! It's scary.

There's some stuff out there on the net about JP Morgan facing bankruptcy because Venuzuela wants to recall their gold stocks home, most of the gold countries own is actually kept elsewhere. Thing is, does the gold actually exist, or is a lot of the gold just stocks bought and sold? And now they have to come up with the actual gold. And what is gold's actual intrinsic value anyway, other than the emotional value we ascribe to it, its uses are limited. Is not the value attached to it speculative, based on what buyers think it may be sold for tomorrow or 10 years down the road, and not a value based in reality? Food is reality, and basic needs, and we very much need to be worried about dentists and doctors. I have a Type 1 Diabetic daughter I am very worried about, as in how to access insulin with worthless dollars.

I'm already retired and have a pension that if we were not sharing property with family we would be living in some low cost accomondation. My pension income has now reached the level of my take home pay while I was working 20 years ago. Unfortunately the cost of living is much higher than the COL 20 years ago. While I should have been saving for retirement I was paying lawyers and child support. Receiving an early Klein retirement was thrown into the mix.

I sense a lot of despondency and worry...or maybe that's just me. It was one thing to be young and go without, to make do. But I don't want to be old and deciding between the Hydro bill and a trip to the dentist. There was a time when having your house paid off was the goal. Now..there are still so many ongoing costs that continue long after the house is paid off.

Sometimes I look at what I think of as the spinning rat race and wonder, how do I get off this ride? Same thought the original hippies had way back in the day. SOmetimes I want to find a dusty little town that time forgot, with screen doors and wide porches with swept wood floors. I want to grow old on the front porch and watch the roses bloom and see my neighbours lift a friendly hand as they stroll by. I want my food, my bills, my life and the lives of everyone I love to be simple. Does that place exist where canned peaches shared with friends and a game of cards on a Saturday night is the good life? I want to die in my own bed, not in some room with blinking lights, busy people in uniform coming in and out and looking at machinery instead of me. I want to live where my presence in a community is more than the work I did to pay the bills. But for all I want this, I can't seem to grasp it.

I worry for young people. If you want to live in BC you better inherit the farm and enough money to never have to depend on said farm for your income. Right now Alberta seems the land of opportunity in comparison. But with big money comes bigger spending habits and I see very well paid young people making STUPID choices with their money! I want to tear my hair out and say, AGH! that $60,000 monster truck will be worth crap by the time you've paid it off and you sure could have done something better with that money than haul your butt around with it, like buy real estate! But I am just an old person and what do I know!

Hubby and I do not live an extravagant life by any means. We started out making do, going without and scraping by to pay the bills. But you think starting out that way and making all the 'right' decisions will gain you a better retirement. WRONG! So you invest because that's the way to old age wealth. WRONG! I'm supposed to have more life answers as I get older. Wrong again. I think Grandma Art better come over, find my sock full of loonies I have under the bed and whack me on the head with it. Maybe knock some cents into me. Ha ha! edited to add, bad puns are free and not harmful to your health.

The problem with money managers is that they represent themselves, not you. They get a commission on selling certain funds and they will try to guide you into buying those funds. We did get nailed in the dot com bubble and it took a few years for our meager fund to recover. The real estate bubble was looming so we moved everything into a guaranteed interest fund. Money manager called me up and argued with me. No two ways about it, he was MAD. I argued back (it's MY money he wants to play with after all). He said "I understood that you were accepting a certain amount of risk!" I said, "I accept a certain amount of risk driving to work in the morning. That doesn't mean I'm going to park on the railroad tracks!"

We moved our fund to another bank and they had me talk with the investment guy there. He basically parroted everything the last guy had said. Enough. We look after it ourselves now. Those guys obviously do not represent our interests.

Retirement is far enough off that I don't think about it too much aside from fond daydreaming. By the time I get there, they may have raised the age to compensate for all the babyboomers leaving the workforce and who knows what there will be for pensions by then. In the meantime we just try to prepare as we can.

"To prepare for retirement, I'm eating a little cat food every day. That way, when I'm 80, it won't be such a shock." - Ron James

Feeling a little guilty. Both my husband and I work- no kids. I had a bad start, no work in my field for 13 years, now finally continuous work. Doug is a great investor. Has a superb money management guy. Diversification was the watchword. Spread the money around. Always pay yourself first. Sure, we have seen losses, everyone has, but the big picture over many years has been gains.

I also listen to CBC one. Lots of good financial advice there. Last thing I heard suggested buying an investment house in Edmonton, AB. Alberta, because property is still good value there, and Edmonton because unlike Calgary the city pays you a substantial chunk to renovate a basement suite, so your property investment is earning more in rent. The ex and I had a house in Edmonton that was paid off entirely by basement rent. It also appreciated 100% in 10 years. Pretty impressive.

Sue

Sue

I grew up with a father who pretched that Canada will always provide. Healthcare will be there. Same with CPP. We are looked after by Canada because we pay our taxes, ect. ect. He never believed in saving for tomorrow and his last cent would burn a hole in his pocket. My father still believes even though his CPP keeps going down and healthcare keeps getting worse.

I'm not very smart, but I took my mother's advice. I read the investment book for dummies and even that was hard for me to understand. It taught me enough though that when my husband's work opted for a group RRSP, I told my husband to sign up. We will never have $$$$$ but we will have $$, maybe $$$ if we are lucky. I would rather keep it in there than take it out because I have faith that if I can weather the storm, calm seas may come. Naive? Maybe but time will tell.

Our house has a LONG history. We bought it, sold it and became renters till the owner died, then bought it back for a song cause while we rented the owner never believed in repairing anything. That was 10 years ago and in 1 Year 2 months it will be paid off.

My husband and I have talked long and hard about our future. We know that one day, we likely have to give up the place, sell and move to something smaller. But we are modifying so we can live and stay here for as long as we can. This is our nest egg. We save what we can.

I have an age in mind where I plan on checking out. I've seen how doctors treat my elderly parents. The only people who grow old gracefully are the ones with money who can afford to buy their healthcare. I have an age in mind and if I make it, I will check out on my terms. Husband knows and supports my decescion.

Our only problem is debt. Like you said Uno, it's the fixed costs that are hardest to control. Home and car insurance. I try to do as many of the repairs myself but it gets harder as I get older and sometimes you HAVE to call a repairman or WORSE, take your vehicle to a mechanic. YIKES!

Apoligies if my comments are long. It's just how I am

Unless you're willing to take the chance that you will be able to survive where you are at this time ( Province ) with your old age pension and what ever investments that you've made ?? Find a province where you can take that nest egg , or sparrows nest and make the money go the longest distance ! Alberta is a beautiful province and if I could I'd move there as well , but the cost of living there will just go up, and BC is out of the question ! I want to live , not live to try and pay off a huge loan to someone for something that I have to consume to much time to do to enjoy life .I'm amazed at the lenght that people go for a house ? I'd much rather have a home , and there is a differance in case someone wants to challenge that ! Life's to short to waste to much time worrying about money of all things ! Go to some other province , buy that parcel for less then you pay's for that used car/truck ,build yourself a retirement home / cottage and prepare for a enjoyable retirement living in a place that's paid off , your own yard , raise a few animals if your health allows .....and enjoy a hobby ! If you want to stay where you are ?? Good luck and I hope it works out for you .I might move to some third world country where I will be able to live like a king ! if only the wife would be willing ......but thats just me .

Good point Prairie Dog. Lots of people go west and then come home to the Maritimes to retire. Houses tend to be cheaper out this way. Especially if you go to a place that is currently taking an economic hit. A few years back a lot of retirees were heading to Newfoundland where they could get cheap houses.

Good money management intro written in plain speech is "The Wealthy Barber". Looks like it's still available but it's been around long enough that you might find a copy in a used book store.

Everyone is so cocerned about where to put there money ! which investment ?? well these places that offer lower cost of living , houses will eventually go up and when they do there will be huge profits to be made .When we bought our five acres the land cost $9500.00 , well right now that has gone up to $50.000 to $60.000 if you can find a lot close to town ! Most are 2.5 acres that someone has cut out of some swamp and people are grabing them so that they have a small piece of the country , and they're paying Huge amounts for them in my mind .But there are small communities that sell lots for $5000.00 to $10.000 and there you are ! Take your time and build what you need ( always remember it's for you first , later the next buyer ! ) on the parcel and enjoy life !! Travel knowing that your neighbour will actually look after your place not rob it ! We live along a rood and strangely enough we all get along ? don't socialize , but watch out for each other and talk when we meet and it's a good feeling .

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Investing in yourself, your knowlege, your home, useful posessions, concrete realities that are of use, make the most common sense. These are things we personally can control, since so few are born into the silver spoon crowd. I totally agree that money investments are a scam. Gains are based on what someone thinks a stock may be worth driven by inflation, not it's actual value. Losses and recessions are engineered because money is made in down markets too. And that money is just paper, who knows what the form of exchange in society may be 10 years from now. I intend to keep maintaining our farm. My mother went hungry in the last depression, keeping a way to feed my family is something she would have demanded that I do. The rest of the chips will fall where they will.

Can't say I'm a big fan of "investment advisors" either. Just because you took a course that is a weekend or 6 months long and got a "certificate", doesn't mean you can read markets and make wise decisions. I tend to go with my gut instincts instead and I'm no worse off than if I got "professional" advice.

Gold scares me too. To me, it is the new US Real Estate. Now that the housing market in the US is dead, money has to go somewhere else, gold is it. This is the new crisis. Don't take my word for it, look at the historic gold prices:
Jan 1, 1971 - about $50
Jan 1, 1976 - about $100
Jan 1, 1981 - almost $700 (at this point people thought it would continue to go up too!)
Jan 1, 1986 - around $300 (ouch)
Jan 1, 1991 - about $360
Jan 1, 1996 - almost $400
Jan 1, 2001 - about $280
Jan 1, 2006 - about $530
Jan 1, 2011 - about $1400

Call me crazy, I don't see a trend. I see a reactionary commodity.

Me, I'm just hoping to pay off the house one day, keep working till I'm about 300 (hey, who knows, science is helping people live longer every day). I'm looking for small places in other provinces where I can buy cheap real estate for cash, just in case.

I do know a lot of people that spend a lot of time in Central American countries because cost of living is cheaper and have talked to several lately that sold houses in BC and bought $20-$30K houses in small-town Saskatchewan. All that money went to retirement. Although, they do have to live in Saskatchewan

To those retiring in small town Saskatchewan from out of province, they need to find out where the nearest doctors and other services are, there are reasons some of those houses are cheap, it costs just as much to build here as anywhere else. Many Saskatchewan retirees are relocating to the cities.
And there is quite a profitable revolving door re-sale business for real estate brokers going on.

I have been selling gold and silver and gem stones for many years through estates or whatever, people seem to buy gold when it is high and I have sold so much for so much in the last few days and weeks, WHY do people buy when the price is high and sell off when the price is lowers. My advice to everyone is when gold drops again to very low amounts buy buy buy and when it gets high sell sell sell, If gold ever drops to 3 4 or 5 hundred an ounce buy as much as you can and do not buy when high even though thousands are buying now, and never sell to one of those gold buying traveling shows.

shadowridge wrote:There's some stuff out there on the net about JP Morgan facing bankruptcy because Venuzuela wants to recall their gold stocks home, most of the gold countries own is actually kept elsewhere. Thing is, does the gold actually exist, or is a lot of the gold just stocks bought and sold? And now they have to come up with the actual gold. And what is gold's actual intrinsic value anyway, other than the emotional value we ascribe to it, its uses are limited. Is not the value attached to it speculative, based on what buyers think it may be sold for tomorrow or 10 years down the road, and not a value based in reality? Food is reality, and basic needs, and we very much need to be worried about dentists and doctors. I have a Type 1 Diabetic daughter I am very worried about, as in how to access insulin with worthless dollars.

The worst is yet to come, finacial markets all around the world are going to collapse, some pensions are going to dissapear, gold will fall and fall hard and when it does buy, if you have gold to sell sell now but not to one of those come into town to buy your gold companies or pawn shops,