This is where your finance takes place

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In the first post of this series about My Big Plan for Retirement, I established my financial situation. As it is the case for the rest of the plan as well, this situation might change any time. In order to get my plan started and improve my financial situation, I already took some actions.

 

The first thing I did was to buy a property where I can live with my family. My house will be very comfortable for my two kids, my wife and myself. Why is that so important? Because moving incurs several costs and if I can avoid them for 5 to 10 years, I will be able to concentrate on other things. We bought a property in a very nice area in a growing city. Therefore, our house has better chance of increasing in value. I plan on using the equity on my house to the maximum. Instead of selling and making a profit, I rather re-mortgage my house once in a while to create assets instead.

 

Speaking of which, many of you probably know by now that I am doing a Smith Manoeuvre. I setup an HELOC when I first bought my house last November and I started the manoeuvre in February. Therefore, my mortgage is slowly becoming tax deductible and the investment should grow enough to cover for the amount of my mortgage much faster. I will write more about my whole Smith Manoeuvre plan in another post. For now, let just say that I started investing now so I can have a good 600K from the Smith Manoeuvre strategy (or even more!) at the age of 55.

 

I am also doing minor changes to my property in order to increase its value. I planted some trees and a cedar edge to make my backyard more intimate. We also add a lot of flowers to add up in colors. I am looking at renovating my basement. I would like to get rid of the carpet and put wooden floor. I also have the possibility to make a third bathroom. However, these projects are not scheduled this year as my wife will be on maternity leaves and we will see our cash flow decreasing for a while.

 

My employer is helping me with my retirement plan by offering a generous pension plan. If I manage to work 30 years for them, I will get a really nice pension for the rest of my life. Also, I have the opportunity to buy the company stocks from my pay cheque. The employer is adding 25% of my contribution in my account. I contribute to this plan to the maximum of my capacity. Chances of having bank stock crashes by 25% are minimal these days. This is why I do not mind concentrating my investment in the financial industry for the time being.

 

As my pension plan is grabbing all my RRSP (IRA) contribution, I don’t have much left to invest in my RRSP account. However, I use my year end bonus to contribute to my RRSP’s. This year, I am planning to put only 1K in my RRSP and keep the rest to cover our new baby’s expenses. That amount will cover the minimum payment from my HBP (Home Buying Plan).For the years after, I should be able to put around 3K. I do not think I will be allowed to invest more money into my RRSP as the equivalence factor from my pension plan will reduce my contribution limit. Still, 2-3K a year can get me close to another 300K in RRSP at the age of 55. Not so bad considering that I’ll have a pension plan on top of that!

 

So this part resumes where I am and what I am doing to become a wealthy retired guy on the beach. Next time, I’ll write about my other projects I have in mind. I strongly believe in getting multiple sources of income to achieve my goal. What about you? Do you have any plan, do you have anything put in place? I am curious to get your ideas and strategies about this topic.

Before I start, I do have to mention that my post ” Am I Waking Up or Am I Falling Into a Bigger Dream? ” is feature in the 110th Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by Fat Pitchs Financials. This carnival is well hosted with clear layout and categories. Congratulation to Fat Pitcher

Retirement. This word evokes several feelings inside each of us. We have the classic thoughts of driving our dream car (bright red M3 in my case!) over a sunny highway along California’s Pacific Ocean’s west coast (I’ve been there, trust me, it is worth the trip!) to go golfing of sit down and relax in your condo by the sea. Who is dreaming of eating Kraft Diner with a Bud Light in front of the Price is Right (Re-Edited HD version of course!) in a small apartment downtown? Nobody of course. However, I have very sad news for you, it will happen for some of us. In a perspective to avoid this situation and actually by my Bmer sooner than later, I am trying to pull out a retirement plan. I will surely change it over time, but still, this is my first thoughts on the subject. Your comments and suggestion are welcome on this topic.

I thought I would give where I am at so you can understand where I want to go with my plan. I am 25 and my wife is 26. We already are lucky parents of a 2 years old boy and expecting an addition to our family by the end of the month. We are making in the range from 60K to 100K combined incomes. We recently bought a house for 255K but surely worth 285K by now. Three properties are presently for sale on my street, they are all asking a little bit more than 300K, so I take 285K as a conservative price. Since we had to liquidate most of our registered and non registered assets to buy our piece of paradise, we have left about 8K in non registered and 10K in registered investments.

We don’t have many debts besides our mortgage, a personal loan and money owed to relatives. The personal loan was used to buy a car and to finance a part of our cash down on our property. I really wanted to have 25% cash down so I could setup an HELOC and start a Smith Manoeuvre. We use our credit cards for every single purchase. However, we have a golden rule to pay the bill at the end of the month, no matter what’s written in the envelope. It requires more discipline but it will surely pay some good trips with all the points we are making on these cards! Our net worth is established somewhere from 60K to 100K as well. The reason why I am not making exact figures is the following: you are not my banker so you do not need to know the full truth. The range will give you a good idea of where are we at right now and should be sufficient to establish my retirement goals in this series.

Income wise, we might run into a bit of a struggle as my wife will be on maternity leave for the next year. Her income will drop to 70% for the first 20 weeks and then will go down to 50% for the next 32 weeks. Barely enough to pay my internet access so I can continue blogging! We plan on decreasing our life style level for the time being. In addition to that, having two small kids at home will not encourage us to spend much money in activities outside the house. We will surely too busy feeding them or sleeping whenever we have a chance!

I also have a solid pension plan. If I happen to work there long enough (considering that our generation is supposed to switch jobs every 5 years or so), I will get 2% of my last 5 years average salary per year worked for my employer. Therefore, I should get a pretty decent income without counting on my RRSP (IRA for our US readers) and other savings. I started contributing to this pension plan a year ago.

So this is basically my financial situation for now. Do not be shy to ask any questions as I am preparing the next post of this series. Cheers!