By Sheryl Smolkin

 

 

Hi,

Today in savewithspp.com we continue our series of interviews with personal finance bloggers. Dave Dineen’s blog “Dave’s retirement journey” appears on Sun Life’s brighterlife.ca

Dave retired in December 2010 in his mid-50s. Before retiring, he spent 30+ years in marketing for several financial services companies, most recently, for Sun Life.

He writes about what it actually feels like to be retired – the pitfalls, as well as the joys. He shares many real-life experiences and what they’ve taught him about how to retire successfully.

Thanks for joining me today Dave.

My pleasure Sheryl. Great to talk to you.

Q: More and more people are now saying they are aiming for Freedom 70 or older. You’ve achieved Freedom 55. Why did you decide to retire so early?
A: Well, a few reasons really. My parents were dairy farmers and my dad died at age 62 before he could retire. And before that, my parents’ vacations actually fit between milking the cows in the morning and milking them again at night, 365 days a year. So I decided to retire while I was young enough, healthy enough and vital enough to do the things I wanted to do.

My career choices along the way, also really led to my retirement. My first career was as a journalist. My second career was in marketing with big financial companies like TD Canada Trust and Sun Life where I created retirement websites and wrote retirement newsletters, blogs and brochures. So I know quite a bit about retirement.

And my third and kind of final career – if there is such a thing as a final career in life – was in market research. In that position I created Sun Life’s Canadian Unretirement Index, which has really contributed to how we understand the idea of retirement and the reality of how retirement is changing in this country.

Q: How are you funding such a long retirement?
A: I’m going to be 58 this year, so I can’t apply for CPP any earlier than two years from now. I can’t apply for OAS for over seven years. And I don’t want to start my workplace pensions too early and get really small payments.

So for now, my wife and I are living off two sources of income. Our basic day-to-day living costs are paid from a stream of dividends on her non-registered investments. The income I get from freelance writing and marketing is what we’re using for the “nice to haves” like travel or even to up our TFSAs.

Q: How many hours a week do you devote to freelance writing and marketing consulting?
A: It really varies. Actually when I retired, I had no intention of freelancing, but I kept getting offers from people who needed some help and knew what I could do. I’ve done work for people even while I’ve been away traveling in England, Scotland, Wales, Italy and Spain. All it takes these days is a laptop, a phone and Skype.

Q: Can you estimate what percentage of your pension income you are earning from your freelance work? 20%? 40%?
A: Oh, it’s more than either of those numbers. It’s made a tremendous difference. So much so, that after more than three years, we actually have yet to touch a penny in our RRSPs or our TFSAs or our pensions. We are preserving our retirement savings and enjoying a better retirement lifestyle than we really expected.

Q: So, let’s get to your blog. What have some of your most popular blogs been about?
A: Well, my blog “Dave’s Retirement Journey,” really is my personal story. And people are interested in living a good life without going through their money too quickly. In our case, we travel a lot. We were on the road almost 12 of our first 36 months of retirement.

So, one of my most popular blog posts was around spending money slowly while you’re taking a long trip. By the way, we just got back a couple of weeks ago from three months in Europe where we ate like royalty, lived centrally in wonderful cities and we did fun things. Yet we still arrived home with a zero credit card balance.

Q: How important do you think it is to retire without debt?
A: Oh boy, it is absolutely necessary. In my mind, if you are in debt, you are not ready to retire. Obviously, if poor health or a job loss forces you out, you kind of have to muddle through somehow. But otherwise, I believe even thinking about retiring with debt is just crazy.

Q: One of the things that you blogged about is how downsizing in retirement doesn’t always work. Can you tell us a little bit about your home and cottage buying and selling and where you’ve finally landed in terms of your housing choices?
A: Yes, it really was complicated. A couple of years before retirement we sold our big four bedroom house and downsized to a one bedroom city condo, plus a cottage. But we realized the upkeep on the cottage was keeping us from travelling, so we sold it. Then we found that the one bedroom condo on its own was too small and my wife really missed her garden. So we ended up selling the condo as well right about the time we retired. In the end, we bought a new condo in Stratford, Ontario, which is in the MoneySense list of the best places to retire in Canada.

Q: With the benefit of over three years as a retiree, what are several unexpected things you’ve learned?
A: Boy, I love that question. I’d say that the first thing is that if you’re the kind of person who’s disciplined enough to have saved well for retirement, then you’re probably going to find it pretty easy to adjust to the financial discipline of living within your means in retirement.

Another unexpected thing for me has been the power of social media. A couple of years after retiring, I remembered that I had a profile on  LinkedIn. I figured I’d better go in and update my profile to show that I was retired. Within a day, someone that I hadn’t worked with in 17 years reached out to me as a result of that LinkedIn update, and asked if I was interested in doing some freelance work for them in the marketing department at Investors Group. Another of my freelance clients actually has paid Google so that if somebody searches for my name, that client’s website comes up.

And I suppose a third unexpected thing I’ve learned along the way is that I actually like doing some freelance work. That’s a big surprise to me, because I really thought that I’d closed the door to work.

Q: So what was the best investment you ever made?
A: This will sound odd, but I believe my best investment was actually to buy a good-quality treadmill about five years ago. It helps keep my wife and I healthy, and to us that’s more valuable than a big tall stack of money.

Q: If you had one piece of advice for Canadians thinking about retirement, what would it be?
A: That’s a tough question. I think Canadians need all kinds of advice when it comes to retirement. But I think for me it all starts with thinking about what kind of retirement you want to have. I like to use a simple analogy.

In your working career, chances are, somebody else wrote your job description. And at the end of your life, somebody else is going to write your epitaph. But it’s that in-between part that you get to write.

So what kind of retirement do you really want to have? Figure that out and of course seek all the help you need to deal with the financial stuff.

Thank you, Dave. I really appreciate talking to you today.

My pleasure, Sheryl.

—

This is an edited transcript of the podcast you can listen to by clicking on the graphic under the picture above. If you don’t already follow Dave’s retirement journey on Sun Life’s brighterlife.ca, you can find them here. Subscribe to receive blog posts by email as soon as they’re available.

By Sheryl Smolkin

Hi,

Today we’re talking to Kevin Press as part of our continuing 2014 series of SavewithSPP.com podcast interviews with personal finance bloggers. Kevin is the Assistant Vice-President of Marketing Insights at Sun Life Financial in Toronto.

His blog, Today’s Economy has appeared on Sun Life’s Brighter Life platform since 2009. Kevin started his career in 1998 at Rogers Healthcare and Financial Publishing; where he had several editorial and marketing positions, including over 3 years as editor of Benefits Canada. He has also volunteered for the Canadian Pension & Benefits  Institute for almost 15 years in many roles, including as National Chair.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Kevin.

Sheryl, thanks so much for the invitation. It’s good to talk to you again.

Q. A blog is a major time commitment. How often do you blog? 
A. These days, it’s just once a week. I’m up every Wednesday but over the years it’s been sometimes twice a week, sometimes even three times a week in the early days.

Q. Why did you decide to start blogging in addition to your more-than-full time job and your volunteer activities? 
A. I love my job. I’m so proud of the team that I lead. But, the truth is – and I think you can relate to this – I don’t think I ever stopped being a journalist. I was asked to launch the Today’s Economy blog back in early 2009, right in the heart of the financial crisis, and that was really a very easy decision.

Q. I can understand that. You can take the man out of journalism, but you can’t take journalism out of the man! What are some of the topics you cover in your blog?
A. As I say, my chief goal is to help readers understand what is happening in the global economy, and here in Canada. So, in that sense, Today’s Economy is not a personal finance blog in the way that some of the others are. I certainly post a lot on personal finance, but primarily what I’m trying to do is focus on explaining key economic trends to a broad audience.

The Eurozone has been an amazing story to follow, and, more recently, emerging markets – what’s happening there now as the U.S. government slows down its quantitative-easing program. That’s a fascinating story. If I’ve helped Canadians understand these big stories, even just a little bit, then I think the blog is a success.

Q. Since you’ve started blogging, the Brighter Life platform has been expanded to include a number of other blogs covering a broad range of subjects. Tell me a little bit about a couple of the other bloggers and what they write about.
A. One of my favorites is Dave Dineen. He writes a blog called ‘Dave’s Retirement Journey’. Dave was actually a member of my team years ago, before he decided to take early retirement I think he’s helped a lot of Canadians make the transition to retirement successfully – just writing in the first-person about his experiences, making that transition himself.

Anna Sharratt does really good work for us on the health beat. She has a blog called Living Well. Gerald McGroarty writes about work issues, but I have to tell you, he’s written a piece recently about an extraordinary story. Last year, Gerald experienced a sudden cardiac arrest, and his wife, who is a registered nurse, saved his life.

Q. I’m going to have to look for that one.
A. It’s called ‘Could You Save a Life?’

Q. How many hits do you usually get when you or the other bloggers post?
A. It’s a really wide range. I’ve written posts that get no more than a couple of hundred visits and others have got well into the six-figures. I can tell you that after years of being a journalist, this blog reaches a larger audience by far than I’ve ever been able to connect with before.

Q. So what have some of your most popular blogs been?
A. The economic forecasts attract a lot of readers. Any of the retirement research we do like our Unretirement Index always scores well. Specifically, what we expected to learn from that research was that many Canadians will work past the traditional retirement age of 65 for lifestyle reasons. But because what we’ve actually ended up tracking are the evolving views of Canadians post-financial crisis it’s turned into even more of an interesting story.

Q. Poll after poll, particularly during RRSP season reveals that Canadians are not saving enough and that they’re worried about how they will live in retirement. Why do you think so many people find managing their finances so difficult?
A. We really believe that the way we can help Canadians most is empower them to act. So research shows, time and again, that adults want to do the right thing – they recognize that lifetime financial security is achievable. It’s just hard for them to get there, it’s hard for them to start. So our goal is to educate.

Q. You published 20 Smart Money Moves at the beginning of the year and you suggest that people maximize their employee benefits. Can you give me one or two examples where you think Canadians are really leaving money on the table?
A. First, a lot of employers sponsor capital accumulation plans – or defined contribution plans as they’re sometimes called – and match employee contributions up to certain limit. So, lesson number one – if you’re lucky enough to have one of those plans, take full advantage.

Lesson number 2 is if your employer offers a group registered retirement savings plan, do what I did. Move your individual RRSP funds over to the group plan – you save a lot in terms of management expense ratios.

The difference between the group environment versus individual RRSPs is quite dramatic. You still realize all the same benefits from your registered savings and you’ll get a better return in the long run.

Q. Interesting. I know the Saskatchewan Pension Plan has employer-workplace programs, and they also offer similar advantages.

Employers and insurance companies spend a lot of time and money communicating with benefit programs – why do you think so many employees are still not getting the message?

A. I think that a lot of folks struggle with the technical nature of the subject, and it really is incumbent upon financial institutions to keep working at finding ways to present information, in the most understandable fashion possible.

Q. If you had one piece of advice to help Canadians better manage their finances, what would it be?

A. One of the best things I ever did was take the Canadian Securities Course. The textbook alone is worth the price of the program. People who are interested in working in the industry very often take that as an early-stage educational opportunity. But what I took away from it was so much more. It’s just such a valuable learning experience. I think it will help you to understand your finances in a very meaningful way.

Q. The federal government is not interested in expanding CPP. A few provinces, Saskatchewan included, are rolling out the new pooled registered pension plans. Do you think PRPPs will be the carrot that helps more Canadians to save what they need for retirement?

A. I’m a big fan of PRPPs. I think they have that potential. The fundamental idea behind the PRPP is that too few Canadians (43%) have workplace pension plans. But even that number is misleading because so many of those folks are public sector workers. In the private sector, fewer than a quarter of workers work for an organization that sponsors a plan. So, the idea is that PRPP can fill that gap. And I’m very hopeful about their ability to improve the pension system in this country.

Q. Youth unemployment is a huge issue. Your Unretirement Index shows that older workers are working longer. Are seniors clogging up the pipeline? How do we get more young people into good jobs? How do we give them a good start?
A. This is such a tough story. I have to say this one of the stories, since I started blogging, that bothered me the most. The unemployment rate among young adults in this country has been stuck at about twice the national average since before the financial crisis.

But of course, this is not a new story. Youth unemployment hit 17.2 percent in the ’92 recession. It hit 19.2 percent in 1983. What’s interesting and what was a surprise to me is  that there actually is no evidence to support the notion that young people can’t find work because older workers are retiring later.

There are lot of good ideas out there about how to help young Canadians. I think the best relate to the choices that young people make in terms of their careers and their education.

There are certain areas of the economy that are more dynamic. There are certain skills that are more marketable. And I think if young people are as strategic as possible, and as parents, I think if we can help our kids be as strategic as possible in making education and career decisions, then they will be well positioned to transition more easily to the workforce. 

Q. So, one of your New Year’s resolutions was to write a Today’s Economy e-book. How’s that going for you?
A. Oh, I love you holding my feet to the fire. What I’ve done is I’ve put together a collection of posts that are not quite so time-sensitive, that still stand up over time.

A lot of what I write is about what’s happening right now and probably won’t have relevance a year, two years down the road. I think that we can help to tell the story of what’s been happening in the economy since 2008 and I’m targeting the second half of the year to pull that together.

Q. You’re ahead of me on that one. Thank you very much, Kevin. It was a pleasure to talk to you today.

A. So good to talk to you again, Sheryl. Thanks for talking to me today.

—

This is an edited transcript of the podcast you can listen to by clicking on the graphic under the picture above. If you don’t already follow BrighterLife.ca, you can find it here and subscribe to receive blog posts by email as soon as they’re available.