Fewer than one in three working Canadians has a guaranteed pension plan¹. Canadians are living longer than ever before and very few have access to traditional sources of retirement income, such as workplace pension plans. In fact, between 1982 and 2011 participation in defined contribution plans grew by 294.4 per cent while participating in defined benefit plans grew by only 2.7 per cent2. While defined contribution plans will potentially offer employees more choice, and more control for their retirement income by allowing them to invest their funds as they choose, they do not provide employees with a guaranteed income in retirement. This can make it difficult for people to accurately plan for how much they will earn in retirement, creating a significant challenge when it comes to retirement planning. Fortunately, your financial professional can help. According to the Towers Watson 2012 Survey of Pension Risk, 72 per cent of Canadian employees either agreed or strongly agreed that they are more concerned about pensions than they were 24 months ago. As part of your retirement income plan, you may wish to work with your financial professional to look at your guaranteed income from all sources and identify any gaps between the money you’ll have coming in and the income you’ll need. Areas to discuss: • Your level of guaranteed income • How much you plan to spend • Recommended income solutions that will provide income for life, plus the potential for growth Planning for a retirement does not need to be a daunting task, especially if you take time to ensure you are considering as many scenarios as possible. 1 Source: Statistics Canada, Pension Plans in Canada and Labour Force Survey, 2011 2Source: Towers Watson, Survey of Pension Risk, 2012  

Using your mortgage prepayment options can drastically reduce the total amount you spend on your mortgage and shorten the time it takes to pay it down. If you follow these three steps, you can be mortgage free sooner than ever! 1. Know your prepayment privileges Most mortgages have allowances for you to prepay down your mortgage faster. The standard prepayment amount allowed per payment can vary depending on your mortgage provider. We can work together on your goals to ensure you have the flexibility you require to pay your mortgage faster. Your mortgage provider may be able to increase and decrease your prepayment privilege at any time throughout the life of your mortgage.   This means that if any life event occurs and you need to reduce your payment to the minimum, you can with ease. Most mortgage providers allow this free of charge, but with some providers you can only change your payments a set number of times throughout the year.   2. Increase your payments Anytime you increase your payments, the excess that you pay per payment goes directly onto the principal portion of your mortgage. This is a great way to drastically reduce the interest you will have to pay over the term of your mortgage.   Typical prepayments allow you to add between 10% to 20% of your payment amount to each payment, depending on your lender. Some lenders also allow the use of “double up payments” which let you double each payment!   Here’s an example of prepayments being used on a typical mortgage: All calculations are based off of a $400,000 mortgage with a 5 year term and 25 year amortization at a rate of 2.59% with monthly payments.   No Prepayments: Monthly payments: $1,809.84 Principal paid over 5 year term: $60,836.51 Interest paid over 5 year term: $47,753.89 Mortgage amount remaining: $339,163.49 Years remaining on mortgage after 5 years: 20 Years Adding a 15% Prepayment: Monthly payments: $2,081.32 Principal paid over 5 year term: $78,201.00 Interest paid over 5 year term: $46,678.20 Mortgage amount remaining: $321,799.00 Years remaining on mortgage after 5 years: 15 years & 9 months As you can see, the mortgage was reduced by $17,364.49 and saved $1,075.69 in interest! The mortgage term was reduced by 9 years and 3 months in only 5 years!   3. Make a lump sum prepayment Making a large payment can be a great option for paying down your mortgage, but may not be ideal for everyone. Lump sum payments help you reduce the amount of interest you will be required to pay on your mortgage. They can also be used to reduce your mortgage amount before selling your home and will reduce the penalty you will be required to pay. Lump sum payments are usually between 10% – 25% of the mortgage total. Typically, you can make a lump sum payment onto your mortgage once a year. Every mortgage provider has their own specific guidelines for how you can make a lump sum payment in a calendar year. Your provider may require you put down a minimum amount for a lump sum prepayment, or you may only be eligible for one on the anniversary date of your mortgage. If you decide that prepayments are for you, you can achieve mortgage freedom sooner than ever! Contact me today and lets set your goals into motion.

What's a bag of peanuts cost these days?  Planning a trip to a Major League Baseball game?  Excluding the travel costs to the ballpark, you can expect to budget a minimum of $75 per game, per couple. However, that being said, you can also spent up to $300 or more for that same game. The variables are the location of your seats and what you choose to eat or drink.   In the last 2 years, I've been to MLB games in Toronto, Denver and Phoenix. I've sat in the nosebleed seats and the club seats too. There are a few regional differences to count for but as an overview, I offer you these average prices. Hot dog: $11 Bag of peanuts: $7.50 Pepsi (fountain drinks) $5.50 Pretzel $7 Popcorn $7 Cotton Candy $7 Bottle Water $6 Draft beer $10 Can Beer $12.50 Bleachers or third deck seats $20 and up Club seats $100 Baseline outfield tickets $75 Infield baseline $125 On field, box, dugout seats $200  Souvenir t-shirt $30 Baseball hat $40  Baseball $15 Jersey $150 There are also a great deal of regional specialty foods beyond the ballpark norm. Phoenix offered at least 6 different versions of a hot dog, including a bacon wrapped dog.  In Denver you could get funnel cakes and deep fried Twinkies too. In Phoenix I didn't bother trying the "Nacho Helmet" but I did find a great grilled cheese sandwich. I think it was the best bargain at the park too. For $12 I got a panini style grilled cheese stuffed with bacon. It was cut in 4 (it was huge) and stacked and presented with a bamboo skewer holding the stack in place. Two of us ate it and still couldn't finish it.  In Toronto, I only pretended to be happy with a $12 hot dog, but was actually very impressed with the carved meat sandwiches served in the club section for about $20.  Tips on cutting costs at the ballpark? Watch for reduced cost tickets on Stubhub.com on game day. They slash prices to clear out tickets. Ticketmaster does not. (That's how I got Club Seats for $40.) Bring your own bottle of water. (Sealed retail bottles allowed. No other drinks or containers allowed.)  I always limit souvenirs to the kids' personal spending money. They can buy what they want with their own money. But I'm not hosing anything but the game. I find that kids ask for less, and spend less when it's their own earned money. A good life lesson, I think.  

Bought myself some cat eye sunglasses from Dollarama. They look ridiculous.....ly awesome.  Drivers side car door is stuck closed now. It was stuck "open" but I fixed it.  Real good.  Likely because I had all that energy from all those mini chocolate bars I also bought at Dollarama.  Picked the kids up from school and had to crawl out the passenger side.  All lady-like  (read as: not lady like at all) and when we all got back in the car, I sat in the passenger side and put my cat eye sunglasses back on, and my old sunglasses on top of those.....and turned around to explain to the wide eyed little ones that I was going to have to drive from the passenger side, which is why I had 2 pairs of glasses on.  Because I'd need more eyes to drive like that. And since I'd never done it before I couldn't say for sure how it would turn out, so they better hang on. They didn't believe me until I started the car. Then they looked worried.  And the bigger one told me I was the weirdest Mom ever.  And he likes it.  And oddly enough, the one that only 25 minutes ago said I was weird, is now dressed up like this.  The end.

You know it’s important to save regularly to help meet your investment goals. The more frequently you save, the more you’ll have in the end. That’s the power of compound interest.  With competing financial priorities, your best intentions to fit saving into your financial security plan can get railroaded. A pre-authorized contribution (PAC) plan can help take some of the worry out of saving, allowing you to contribute regularly to your investments, directly from your bank account. It’s the idea of “paying yourself first” by treating saving like any bill or re-occurring payment. This strategy is more effective because increasing the frequency of saving enhances the advantages of dollar-cost averaging. You can further accelerate your savings by including an additional option to your PAC that allows you to automatically increase your payment amount annually – either by a specific dollar amount or a percentage. This is a convenient way to ensure your savings progress isn’t eroded by inflation. With RRSP’s, consider how a PAC can help take your savings to the next level. Say you currently invest $400 each month. After 20 years, the $400 monthly contribution would grow to $181,222, assuming a fixed rate of six per cent. However, if you saved $100 each week and increased that by 2.5 per cent per year – so the next year you would save $102.50 a week – at the same annual fixed rate, your savings would grow to $239,621. Pre-authorized contribution plans are a simple and easy way to save for your future. Your financial professional can help you to determine which PAC options and contribution schedules may work best for you.