Weekend Reading – Dividend raises, giveaways, retirement numbers and more #moneystuff

Mark. I never called anyone stupid! and you deleted most of my above comment – and – you should not have. Please delete all my comments from your entire site and block me. Thanks!

Done further investigation on CPP that I thought many would be interested in.
As many of you know – I have always stated taking CPP at age 60 was better than waiting to age 65. I gave many reasons why here https://www.myownadvisor.ca/should-you-defer-your-canada-pension-plan-to-age-65-or-70/ and here https://www.myownadvisor.ca/when-to-take-your-canada-pension-plan-benefit/
Now I have learned that when your spouse dies and you get 60% of his/her CPP – IT’S ON WHAT THE DECEASED WOULD HAVE MADE AT AGE 65! (regardless if he/she took it at age 60).
CPP said:
“We first calculate the amount that the CPP retirement pension is, or would have been if the deceased had been age 65 at the time of death”. and there is more……….. The max any one person can collect is $1,134.17 monthly. This includes your CPP and the 60% from your spouse (together). So if you were collecting the max CPP $1,134.17 and your spouse was collecting the max CPP $1,134.17 – then when one dies – you lose $1,134.17 monthly and there is no 60% to collect. So why bother trying to collect the max? or better yet – Why wait to age 65 to collect your CPP?

re: According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost half of U.S. families have no savings at all, the median amount is US$5,000 and the median for U.S. families with savings is just US$60,000. This means the majority of Boomers in the U.S. and the next generation (Gen X) living there might be living out retirement years in poverty.

Retire in poverty? More than half their population is already living in poverty. America has the greatest material wealth in the world; it also has the greatest degree of wealth inequality. Most people own nothing, a few people own almost everything. The top 20% own 90% of the wealth in America; the bottom 80% own 10% of the wealth. The average net worth of the bottom 60% is $1,000.

Being that it’s Black History Month, if you think not too hard, it’s easy to conclude as to why America has developed this type of financial scenario as opposed to a country like Canada.

All my investments are ETFs (huge diversification national/north american/international and all sectors) includes bonds, fixed income, stocks. I can sit back and relax all the time, no matter how crazy the stock exchanges go up and down. My plan is to use only the dividend/interest on my monies, so I never have to use the principal. Technically it won’t matter what the price of any shares are if I have no interest in cashing them in, just collecting the monthly income they earn. Any loss/gain is only on paper.

Hi,
I’m thinking of revising up my portfolio so that I mostly buy index funds but also buy Canadian stocks that will generate dividends. The popular dividend generating Canadian stocks are mostly in the banking, oil (including oil pipeline companies), insurance companies and utilities sectors. I’ve read other blogs say that with this approach if one or more sectors is in trouble then in your retirement years your dividend income will drastically decrease or some of your stocks might even go to zero. They instead recommend getting your dividends from a 50/50 allocation whereby you try to live on bond income during your retirement years. The idea with both approaches above is so that you don’t have to sell your assets for income (e.g. 4% withdrawal concept). What are the pros/cons of the above approaches and which approach do you plan on taking in your retirement years. This topic will be a good idea for a new post/article.

Thanks.

You can add BIP.UN to the list of dividend increases as they just announced a $.035 increase to the quarterly payments. It’s been a good week despite the market pull back.