We got a chance to catch up recently with Sheryl Smolkin, the original Save with SPP writer who has had a long career as a pension lawyer, a magazine editor, and a freelance writer/blogger.

Speaking over the phone from her Toronto home, Sheryl explains that because she worked at a variety of jobs over her working years, her retirement income comes from a variety of different streams.

She was Canadian Director of Research and Information at a global consulting firm for 18 years. Later, she became editor of Employee Benefit News magazine for four years, and subsequently she turned her talents to freelance writing. Sheryl played a pivotal role in setting up the Saskatchewan Pension Plan’s (SPP) social media efforts, including the Save with SPP blog that she pioneered.

When she left consulting, she received a defined benefit pension and retiree health insurance, she explains. As a result, she and her husband have retirement income from an employment pension, government benefits, and other registered and un-registered savings, including SPP. They have been “drawing down” income from various streams since their mid-50s.

Sheryl says she regularly transferred $10,000 annually from her RRSP to SPP over the years. When she reached 71, she looked at her SPP options and decided on the prescribed registered retirement income fund (PRRIF) to draw down her savings. With that option, she will cash out the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) required minimum amount from her account each year.

So, she says, while some folks (including this writer) might think that 71 is a sort of magic age when all retirement savings gets converted to retirement income, that’s probably not the case for many people.

“My recommendation is always this,” she explains. “Everybody worries about having enough money in retirement; but the real worry is, are you going to have enough time” to spend it. “Enjoy spending the money – there are very few people who actually run out of money.”

She’s been busy since she wrapped up her writing work for SPP back in 2018. In the pre-COVID era, she took courses at Ryerson University, took care of her aging mom who passed away in 2019, visited the kids and her granddaughter in Ottawa, and went to every sort of live theatre, music performance or other show on offer. “We were having a lot of fun before COVID,” she says, and that will resume now that the pandemic appears to be winding down.

Her husband, a “serial hobbyist,” has not slowed down on his woodworking during the pandemic. She has taken advantage of the quiet period to catch up on her reading.

Sheryl does not hanker for a return to the workforce. When she left her consulting position in 2005, she notes, “I was NOT ready for retirement, but by 2018, it was time.”

She says however, that occasionally she does “miss the satisfaction of producing a piece of work, and seeing it online or in print – creating.” With her job at the magazine, there were a lot of conferences and travel, which she liked – but recalls that at one conference, she also agreed to produce a daily newspaper which was particularly hectic.

Fun is a central theme in talking to Sheryl. She says it is very important to have fun in your retired life. “Everyone has something they want to do, but the beauty of it (retirement) is that you don’t HAVE to do anything, if you don’t want to,” she says.

These days, she is anticipating getting involved “in the rhythm of the year” again through visits with friends and family. She looks forward to resuming “long distance travel” again once things are safe. Until then, “I’m excited to be able to go back to Stratford, back to the Shaw Festival, and other Canadian destinations.”

Sheryl says retirement really consists of three phases – the early stage, the mid-stage, and the later stage.

“Don’t be afraid to spend money in the earlier, more active stage of retirement,” she advised. “There will be less travel and shopping as you get older.”

She is glad that the SPP has provided one of her retirement income streams. “I think it’s a very good program,” she says. “For us, SPP is part of a bigger overall plan, which has both registered and unregistered components.”

So retirement income is a river fed by multiple income streams – we thank Sheryl for that lovely, and very evocative image. She says hi to everyone at SPP in Kindersley, and we all thank her very much for her time and wish her continued happiness in her life after work.

Need to add a good stream to your future retirement river? Consider joining the SPP. It can augment the income you’ll receive from workplace and government plans, and the best part is that you can now contribute up to $6,600 a year – and can transfer in up to $10,000 a year from other RRSPs. Be sure to check out SPP today!

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Your 20s may be the best time to start saving for retirement

Writing for Yahoo! Finance, Phoebe Dampare Osei points out that your 20s is a good time to start saving for retirement.

“Your 20s is that decade where society says you’re old enough to have some responsibilities, but young enough that you haven’t quite settled down yet,” she writes. She notes that statistics from the U.K., where she is based, show most couples aren’t getting married until their 30s these days, a big change from the 1970s when they married younger.

Similarly, U.K. stats show people aren’t buying their first homes until they are in their 30s or older, she adds.

“But what about life after 60? It may seem odd to be thinking so far ahead, but your future you, will thank your present you, if you take care of yourself now,” writes Dampare Osei. We love that sentiment!

Her suggestions:

• “In your 20s you have fewer responsibilities than someone much older, so it’s easier to save now than a lot more later with more financial pressure.”
• “State pension alone will not cover you — check with your employer to make sure you are eligible and auto-enrolled.” (Auto-enrolment in a workplace pension plan is not a common practice in Canada – so here at home it’s up to you to find out if there’s a retirement plan and how you can qualify to join it.)
• “If you do not have enough money saved for retirement you may have to keep working beyond state pension age. Working into your 70s if you don’t have to and don’t want to doesn’t sound like much fun.”

This last point is very true. Many people without retirement savings simply say to themselves well, I’ll keep working until 70. That sounds great when you are younger and healthier, but will you be healthy enough to keep punching the clock by age 70? Not everyone is.

She raises a good argument about state benefits not being all that great.

To Candianize this a bit, the current maximum benefit from the Canada Pension Plan is $1203.75, but the average amount is $706.57, according to the federal government’s own site.

The maximum Old Age Security payment, again per the government’s web, is $626.49.

In fairness to the government, these benefits were never intended to provide the only income people receive in retirement – when they were launched, most people had workplace pensions, and these programs were designed to supplement that.

So the most anyone could get from both programs is a little over $1,800 a month – and not everyone qualifies for the maximum.

The point Dampare Osei makes is a very good one. When you are young, single, and just starting out in the workforce, you probably don’t have as many expenses as you will when you’re in your 30s, married, raising kids and paying a mortgage. So it’s a good time to start your retirement savings program.

Another great reason to start early is the “magic” of compounding. The longer your money is invested, the more dividends and interest it will accrue.

As an example, the Saskatchewan Pension Plan has averaged an eight per cent rate of return since its inception 35 years ago. And while the past rate of return is of course no guarantee of what SPP will do in the future, the track record is worth noting. If there isn’t a workplace pension plan to sign up for, the SPP may be just the thing for you. And as Dampare Osei correctly notes, your future you will be very pleased if the current, youthful you gets cracking on retirement now rather than later.

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The summer of 2021 has seen the start of what looks like a return to normal. COVID numbers are down, vaccination rates are up, the economy is re-opening (carefully) and there’s talk again of travel, and of going back to the office.

Yet there’s also talk from some of NOT going back to the office? What gives? Save with SPP had a look around to explore this issue.

Research from Robert Half, an HR consulting firm, from April found that about one-in-three office workers “would quit their job rather than return to the office,” reports Western Investor.

More than half of those surveyed on the idea of returning to work said they “prefer a hybrid work arrangement, where they can divide time between the office and another location,” the article notes. Some of those surveyed did express concern that working from home has its downsides, such as the “loss of relationships with co-workers” and “fewer career opportunities and decreased productivity.”

Those who do imagine coming back want some perks, the article says, such as “greater freedom to set office hours, employer-paid commuting costs, a relaxed dress code and providing childcare.”

Ouch. What would the “dress for success” workaholics of the ‘80s make of this office aversion?

The numbers are similar south of the border. An article in Commercial Observer says that while 62 per cent of Manhattan workers were expected to return to the office, that leaves “one in three” who don’t plan to come back.

Only about 12 per cent of Manhattan’s 1.5 million office workers had returned to work by early summer and “39 per cent of people would be willing to quit their job rather than give up remote work,” the article says.

A more recent survey from Canada Life sheds some light on the concerns people have about re-entering office life.

Even given the dropping COVID numbers and higher vaccination rates, “46 per cent of Canadians working from home are anxious about the threat of the virus if and when they return to the office,” Canada Life reports in a media release.

Mary Ann Baynton of Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, who partnered on the research with Canada Life, explains this reluctance.

“For those working from home, this transition presents new and unique concerns, because they’ve been more isolated and have been able to limit their exposure to the virus for a long time. Employers need to understand what their teams are concerned about so they can effectively support them during this significant adjustment,” she states in the release.

COVID risk was by far the biggest concern identified in the research, the release notes – only 10 per cent were concerned about changes to their work-life balance, nine per cent about increased commuting, and less than one per cent about impacts to children and their care, the release notes.

From our informal research amongst friends and colleagues who have been working at home, there is certainly interest in having the flexibility to work from home – at least some of the time – going forward. If you’ve ever been crammed onto a train or subway car packed with commuters, or stuck in a 10-km long traffic jam each workday, or circling some lot in a fruitless quest for the last parking spot, it’s hard to look forward to starting all that up again. Only time will tell how it all plays out.

One thing that works as well at home as it does in the workplace is the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. You can sign up as an individual, effectively creating a tailored, end-to-end pension plan for yourself that looks after not only investing your savings, but converting them to income later on. If you’re an employer, you can offer SPP at your workplace, creating a great way to attract new team members and hanging on to the people you’ve got! Why not check out SPP today!

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Could our passion for savings defuse the expected end-of-COVID spending boom?

In an interesting and perhaps “contrarian” article, Leo Almazora of Wealth Professional asks if Canada’s return to being a nation of savers could actually have a downside.

“For many pundits and analysts, the light at the end of the tunnel that is the COVID-19 crisis has been the prospect of a surge in spending as vaccinations allow the unleashing of pent-up demand. But based on certain interpretations of savings data, that may not be the scenario that plays out,” he writes.

He notes that during COVID – with so many spending options removed from play – savings rates jumped to almost 20 per cent in many industrialized countries, including Canada.

It was expected, Almazora notes, that once economies began reopening, the urge to spend would overcome the tendency to save. But research cited from Barron’s magazine in the article shows that “even as economies have reopened, savings rates have stayed unusually high.”

Almazora’s article contends that there were two types of COVID savers – a “forced savers” group that, while keeping their employment, had very few options to spend their money on, and “precautionary savers,” who – worried by the pandemic – save for the “next downturn or economic calamity.”

There’s a third group, he writes, who have sort of got out of the habit of spending on hotels and restaurants, and won’t be spending as much on those things going forward.

This is a very insightful piece. Three groups are described, those who can’t spend their money, those who worry about a fourth wave or some other nasty financial surprise, and those who have been converted to a new obsession – frugality.

One would assume that the “can’t spend” group will be among the first to book vacation flights and resume travel. Those who Almazora describes as “preppers” for a possible further wave of problems presumably won’t join in the fun, nor will those who have decided cooking at home and cutting back on expenses was not only fun, but has led to a piling up of cash in their savings accounts.

It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out; it may take as long to return to a “fully normal” economy as it took COVID to derail “normal” and move us to a stay-at-home/no spend reality.

This writer recalls doing research on pension plan funding – where people sock away money for retirement via workplace plans – and hearing economists suggest the act of saving money was, in effect, negative for the economy in the now. Money saved today cannot be spent today, the argument went.

While this is factually correct, that viewpoint – savings can be bad – ignores the fact that the saved money is invested, often in job-creating Canadian companies and services, and then withdrawn and spent years later by the retirees. It’s deferred spending, in a way.

As a soon-to-be double grandparent, this aging scribe has reached the opinion that any savings is always a good thing. Emergency savings when the roof leaks or the fence falls down; long-term savings for retirement income and to help the grandbabies.

If you have a workplace pension plan, be sure to not only join it, but to contribute to it to the fullest extent possible. If you don’t have a plan – or if you are a small business thinking of offering one to your team – check out the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. This scaleable retirement product works as well for one person as it does for a larger group – and they’ve been delivering retirement security for 35 years.

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A few years ago – before the pandemic – Global News reported that Canadians were cutting back on charitable giving.

Citing research from the Fraser Institute, Global reported that in 2017 Canadians donated just 0.54 per cent of their income to charity – less than half of what Americans donated (1.25 per cent) in the same timeframe.

Given the severe economic mayhem the pandemic has wrought upon us, Save with SPP wondered if charitable giving has taken an even further plunge.

It sounds like a recovery in charitable giving is underway, states an article posted in the Globe and Mail.

According to the article, authored by the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), “in the 12 months since March 2020 when the pandemic was declared, more than three-quarters of Canadians who had given previously to charity continued their philanthropy and gave larger gifts than in past years.”

And while only 70 per cent of Canadians made charitable donations in 2017, 76 per cent did in 2020, and “the average size of the gifts was much higher – up from $772 in 2017 to $965 in 2020,” the article adds.

The AFP’s chair Susan Storey is quoted as saying “Canada is a phenomenally, uniquely generous nation, and philanthropy, at its core, is about helping others and strengthening communities,” she says. “So, it’s not surprising that for those that could give, they did – and generously.”

The Canada Helps website says that while “year over year” giving grew, the overall rate of giving is expected to decline about 10 per cent due to COVID-19.

This site suggests that our charitable giving is more targeted during tough economic times.

Canada Helps reports that Canadians gave 1.6 per cent of their income to charity; however, the percentage of Canadians who make donations is down from the level of 24 per cent it reached in 2007.

Charities have had to be resourceful during the COVID-19 pandemic, when traditional avenues, such as displays in malls or street corners, weren’t available. Online donations are one solution, and in Ottawa, local branches of the Royal Canadian Legion used a drive-thru approach for last fall’s poppy campaign, reports CTV News.

“I think it’s a great idea. First off you don’t have the older veterans out in the cold and wet, obviously it’s keeping them safe from the people in the stores and malls,” Richard Coney tells CTV, praising the idea of a drive-thru poppy campaign.

Donations to Indigenous Peoples’ Charities – for example are up 2.25 per cent, as are donations to social services charities (up 2.2 per cent) and health charities (1.8 per cent).

If you’re able to help out the charity of your choice – and maybe have had to cut back due to the pandemic’s impact on your finances – consider resuming your contributions now that we are emerging from the darkness of the pandemic. There’s a lot riding on it for a lot of people.

Similarly, if you’d had to cut back on retirement savings during COVID-19, gear back into it as soon as you can. A nice feature of the Saskatchewan Pension Plan for its individual members is that you can gear up your contributions when times are good, and gear down when they aren’t. The flexible SPP – celebrating its 35^th year of operations — is open to accepting monthly pre-authorized contributions, or a little bit at a time through the “online bill payment” section of most banks. It takes many small steps to complete a journey, after all!

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Retirement saving concerns top health, employment and debt: HOOPP research

Writing in the Globe and Mail, Rob Carrick reports on new research that shows Canadians are more worried about retirement savings than they are about their physical and mental health, employment security, and debt burden.

Carrick cites research from the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan that found that, of 2,500 respondents, “48 per cent said they were very concerned about have enough money in retirement. Only the cost of day-to-day living ranked as a larger worry. Health and other financial/economic worries lagged well behind.”

The survey was carried out in April 2021, and clearly the pandemic has had an impact on people’s attitudes towards their finances, Carrick reports. “The poll results suggest 52 per cent of Canadians have been financially harmed by the pandemic, notably younger and lower-income people,” he writes.

Carrick notes that another recent survey by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives that found that “Indigenous and racialized seniors… have average retirement income that is, respectively, 25 per cent and 32 per cent lower than seniors who are white.” But, he points out, the HOOPP research shows that even those with higher incomes are worried about retirement income – “42 per cent of those making more than $100,000 said they were very concerned about their retirement savings,” he writes.

Carrick sees a glimmer of good news mixed in with all the gloom, and that is, that the pandemic creates, for many of us, an opportunity to save.

“One more highlight for the well-off is the opportunity to save more money than ever as a result of economic lockdowns that curtailed travel, concerts and commuting to work for many. In the HOOPP survey, almost half of participants said they were able to save more money,” he notes.

He suggests that while those who have managed to stay employed throughout the crisis and have some unspent money should definitely sock some of it away in an emergency fund, retirement savings is a logical destination. “A lot should be put away for retirement using tax-free savings accounts and registered retirement savings plans,” writes Carrick.

The HOOPP survey found that Canadians generally are concerned about the national retirement savings rate. “Sixty-seven per cent of participants agreed with the statement that there is an emerging retirement crisis,” Carrick reports.

Those surveyed cite the rising cost of living, the “prices home buyers are paying,” and inflation as being inhibitors to retirement saving. Save with SPP will add another factor – high household levels of debt – to this category.

It’s easier to save for retirement if you belong to a pension program at work. The money comes off your pay before you have time to spend it. But if you don’t have a workplace plan, the Saskatchewan Pension Plan may be a solution. With SPP, you can set up automatic withdrawals that can coincide with your payday, allowing you to pay your future self first. The folks at SPP, who have been running retirement money for 35 years now, will diligently invest your savings and – when work is in the rear-view mirror – will help you turn savings into retirement income. Check them out today.

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To say that the Saskatchewan Pension Plan’s new Executive Director has deep roots in pensions is certainly no understatement.

Shannan Corey, who grew up in rural Saskatchewan, is the daughter of an actuary, one whose clients included not only pension plans, but chicken farmers. “They used to call my dad the chicken actuary,” she says with a smile.

That prairie upbringing is reflected in her values today. “My parents instilled the importance of community, and establishing roots, from a young age,” she tells Save with SPP. And while still a student, she worked with her dad’s actuarial firm, Alexander and Alexander, now part of the Aon group. She completed a Mathematics degree from the University of Saskatchewan.

Her father did some work on the SPP file many years ago, and she got to meet SPP’s outgoing Executive Director Kathy Strutt way back when. “So I have a very early connection with the plan,” she says.

Over the course of her career as an associate actuary she has consulted “for a broad range of clients of all sizes and types,” has helped shape some of Saskatchewan’s pension laws and regulations, and worked on client communications, retirement planning, and more.

Her more recent roles included broader consulting with Koenig & Associates, where she earned a Chartered Professionals in Human Resources (CPHR) designation, and Federated Co-operatives Limited, where she further developed “my passion for member services.” She has also served as a Board member for the CSS Pension Plan– a plan that is, like SPP, a defined contribution plan – and is now looking forward to her new role at SPP.

Corey says that while we have of late been living through the “challenging time” of the pandemic, SPP members can feel secure – and can rely on – their SPP pensions.

She says she expects a positive future for SPP, thanks “the collective experience of the team, and their human touch.”

The group at SPP has been successful in building a solid foundation for the organization, and “the ability to continue to evolve and grow.” Services for members will no doubt continue to grow and expand as SPP moves forward, she says.

The fact that SPP is a voluntary plan – one that members choose to join – is part of the reason it is so unique, she explains. SPP is a plan for the “everyday” people, and a non-profit organization as well. Its features, such as the use of pooling contributions to keep investment costs down, and the new Variable Benefit, show the plan continues to be an innovator.

She praises the SPP team’s “collective experiences,” and say it will be leveraging that talent that will “help the organization grow and thrive.” SPP has a warm feel to its organization, and Corey says she feels “like I’m coming home.”

The organization not only concerns itself with the retirement security of its members, but with their general knowledge about money, she notes. Building financial literacy, she says, not only provides an opportunity to help people, “it also aligns with me personally, and my community and my values.”

We join the entire SPP team in welcoming Shannan Corey to her new role.

When SPP was founded 35 years ago, it was intended to provide the possibility of a pension to farm wives and homemakers who didn’t otherwise have access to retirement benefits. Since then the SPP has opened its doors to anyone who wants to augment their retirement savings via a voluntary defined contribution pension plan. Find out how SPP can help secure your retirement future!

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Does being broke have an upside – better money management skills?

An interesting column by Terri Huggins, published on Yahoo! Finance, provides a unique take on being broke.

Huggins (who freely admits to having lived through many broke years) takes the position that so-called broke people may actually be better with money than those who are, for want of a better phrase, unbroke.

When you have less money overall, she writes, “financial awareness becomes more of a survival tactic than a money habit.”

People without money don’t have the “luxury” of “putting off dealing with… financial fears and stresses.” She says that while living on a shoestring is certainly not much fun, “there is a silver lining… being forced to think about money constantly means you naturally become very good at thinking about money!”

This includes, she adds, “managing money problems and coming up with financial solutions that fit your immediate needs.”

The downside, Huggins, says, is that those low on income are naturally forced to focus on “immediate needs – with little thought for the long term.” If you are having trouble making this month’s rent, saving up money in an emergency fund is “pointless.”

She recalls her own broke years, where “every day was a financial emergency. How can you contemplate saving for retirement when you’re unsure if you’ll have enough to pay for food this month?”

The fact that those living on very tight money can’t realistically save for retirement or emergency funds sometimes gets them painted as being “bad with money,” Huggins writes. But the money management skills of those on low incomes may be quite the opposite, she says. “Broke or poor or otherwise financially struggling people everywhere are forced to make tough decisions every day, gamble with those decisions, and make sacrifices to somehow fund the things that truly matter.”

She summarizes the chief money insights that “broke” people have, and that others may wish to adopt:

• Mastering money tracking – they know exactly how much money they have, and exactly what their bills are going to be
• Every expense is a mindful decision – broke people don’t have the privilege of making “poorly thought out purchases on a whim.”

Huggins argues that so-called “financially sound” people probably don’t know what they make and what all their expenses are. She suggests they are far more prone to make impulse purchases or poorly thought-out decisions. Now that she herself is no longer on the broke side of the equation, she concludes by saying “I’m still able to take those broke-learned money management lessons with me as I strive to grow my savings, expand my investment portfolio, and create wealth for years to come.”

There’s a lot of very good advice here. We all live through periods of tight money – some of us for a while, others for many long years. If you know exactly what there is to spend on bills each month, and how much you’re earning, you are in command.

And when you get to that period where your income is more than the sum total of your monthly bills, be sure to think of your future. Once your personal finances are running in the black, put away a little of your personal “surplus” to help make life easier for your future self. A great place to stash that extra cash can be the Saskatchewan Pension Plan, where you can start small and build up your savings as your income grows. Check them out today!

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