Required retirement nest egg

[Scott h]

Originally Posted by DRhunter

Lots of great ideas and I agree that it is best to start as early as possible and watch it grow. I am just recently 40 and for years thinking that my net worth would never grow then all of a sudden you wake up one day and recognize that the “experts” were right about starting early!

It does seem the majority of conversation is around RRSP, TFSA and stocks etc. and while I do not disagree that these are great options, in my opinion (and personal experience) real estate out performed my liquid investments probably a hundred fold over the last decade. Hindsight is always 20/20, but if I would have taken all the money I put into RRSP and TFSA and utilized in sound rental properties, I could probably retire today. As it were, at least with the rental properties I do have, has probably reduced my expected retirement by 10 years.

Just something to consider in your investment mix. One thing to keep in mind though, just like stocks, there are winners and big losers when it comes to real estate.

DR


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Real estate is/can be a great investment. The one issue that makes it different from other forms is that it requires some work by the owner, where as the other forms are just essentially just bank accounts.

[CanuckShooter]

IF I was young and starting out I'd buy some land and build a trailer court, with the nicest lot for my unit. Then I'd rent out the pads. You get the benefit of cheap living, rental income and capital appreciation. Once the rents are coming in you could sell your unit and buy a house away from the business so you could start building tax free capital gains in a principle residence.

Things could be tight for a couple of years but once the court is paid off it's all gravy coming in from the pad rentals.

[Dean2]

Originally Posted by CanuckShooter

IF I was young and starting out I'd buy some land and build a trailer court, with the nicest lot for my unit. Then I'd rent out the pads. You get the benefit of cheap living, rental income and capital appreciation. Once the rents are coming in you could sell your unit and buy a house away from the business so you could start building tax free capital gains in a principle residence.

Things could be tight for a couple of years but once the court is paid off it's all gravy coming in from the pad rentals.

The highest revenue for the least work and monthly maintenance is actually renting out RV storage, followed by self storage operations. There is a surprising amount of cost to operating a trailer Court; From Property taxes, to maintaining power, sewer, water, common areas, garbage removal, snow removal and road way repairs, the net margin is not that large. The other advantage to RV storage is you can have a house on it, on a subdivided piece, and still have the residential primary residence exemption.

[CanuckShooter]

Originally Posted by Dean2

The highest revenue for the least work and monthly maintenance is actually renting out RV storage, followed by self storage operations. There is a surprising amount of cost to operating a trailer Court; From Property taxes, to maintaining power, sewer, water, common areas, garbage removal, snow removal and road way repairs, the net margin is not that large. The other advantage to RV storage is you can have a house on it, on a subdivided piece, and still have the residential primary residence exemption.

That's very true, RV storage would be a good investment as long as there was enough demand. With the way housing is now I suspect the trailer communities will always have a lot of tenants.

[bigbuck]

[QUOTE=big zeke;4707876]Mr Bigbuck, reading your post is delightful...you have half (maybe more) of your peers beaten...you have a plan, many at your age don't.

Appreciate it Zeke. Long ways to go, we at least we are on the tracks lol

[Glion]

Currently I am most focused on rrsp's. I am doing this strictly for tax purposes now. With 4 young children if I can lower my personal income it definitely bumps up my CCB, which is tax free income. Example: atm if I put lets say 4k in my rrsp I get over 1k back in taxes, however I also get over 1k in CCB. However at this stage I am very torn between rrsp's and tfsa.

[CanuckShooter]

Originally Posted by Glion

Currently I am most focused on rrsp's. I am doing this strictly for tax purposes now. With 4 young children if I can lower my personal income it definitely bumps up my CCB, which is tax free income. Example: atm if I put lets say 4k in my rrsp I get over 1k back in taxes, however I also get over 1k in CCB. However at this stage I am very torn between rrsp's and tfsa.

Hard to beat tax free income, you probably should be beating the rrsp to death to max out on the CCB.

[Outbound]

I'm at an income level due right now where I need to dump money into my RRSP to bring my overall tax rate down as much as possible. Once my income drops back to normal, I'll be going back to the TFSA. What I don't like about the RRSP is that it's not liquid. With the TFSA I can move money in and out if needed, as long as I stay within the contribution limits.

I'm dabbling in relatively safe ETFs such as cash.to and xeqt. I don't really have industry knowlegde to make investing in individual company stocks very profitable and I always seem to miss the boat on things like Nvidia.

I'd like to invest in real estate at some point too because hard assets attract me more than an account the government can take control of, but I don't quite have the scratch to do so yet nor the knowledge of what to look for. I really don't have much interest in being a residential landlord, but commercial real estate seems to be a more difficult nut to crack in terms of making a profit.

[roper1]

Originally Posted by Desert Eagle

Not to derail, but as part of the planning process I am wondering what the best balance is between TFSA, RRSP and general savings. I don’t want to get into the huge tax game down the road when I am retired, so I want to understand from those that have been there what has worked for you.

Currently I am not a huge proponent of the RRSP, we do utilize it some, but also have a split of unregistered investments.

I'm sure a lot of this is age dependent. When I started investing, RRSP's were the 7th best investment. Blue chip dividend paying stocks were #1, commercial & residential real estate were good, I can't remember the exact 6 better ones.

But......for a wage earner, my personal belief is the RRSP is #1. Tax comes off our cheque every other Friday. RRSP one way to get some of that back. Take the tax refund & invest in TFSA & non-registered. RRSP ties the money up so we aren't tempted to dip. For the average working guy, can you actually save a couple million? Probably not, so why stress about excess retirement taxation. I have a great friend, a CA. He quietly told me one time that paying a little tax isn't all bad.

[brewster29]

Originally Posted by cranky

Mistake i made was i retired a bit to late. Didnt need to work but kept going. Downsized my business by quite a bit but still worked.
Finally retired and about a year later a massive heart attack put a kibosh on enjoying retirement.
If you can retire dont hold off till you get sick and cant enjoy it much, or worse. Retired friends used to tell me that but i kept working. Just saying.

I really struggled with the decision to retire. I went at 60. I had climbed as far as I wanted and was getting paid well. The company I was working for got bought out and the new owners gutted our benefits and pension plan and made it hard to stay. Between my crappy pension, RRSPs, the monthly from the Feds, and my wife’s pension we live modestly but well. We have newer vehicles, no debts and manage to take nice trips abroad. Despite drawing on them for nearly eight years my RRSP’s are currently worth more than when I retired.

Prior to pulling the plug I read all I could about retirement. What did it for me was reading “on their death bed nobody wishes they had worked more”.