What do you think?
Rate this book
The Real Retirement: Why You Could Be Better Off Than You Think, and How to Make That Happen
Straight Talk and solid retirement advice for all Canadians In the face of government changes, financial market volatility, and an aging workforce, Canadians are understandably concerned about the impact on their finances and their future retirement. This reassuring book debunks the generally-accepted claims about necessary savings rates, which can cause paranoia among those beginning to contemplate retirement. The authors offer greater insight into planning approaches that are not widely understood, demystifies retirement targets (age, savings, income), and outlines concrete approaches to maximizing retirement savings. The Real Retirement offers a down-to-earth guide for preparing for comfortable retirement and shows what it takes to achieve it.
- GenresFinanceNonfiction
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
11 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 22, 2019
4.5 "detailed, reassuring and helpful" stars.
2016 Honorable Mention Read
I grew up in a working class family where both my parents were industrious new immigrants to this country. When they came to Canada in the late 1960s there was lots of work and they established themselves through diligence and initial difficulties and what sounds like minor ethnic discrimination against them. My father worked himself up to middle management (with a grade six education) and my mother ran three different businesses at her peak. They established themselves with the wealth of the upper middle class but as they both grew up in dire poverty they spent very little other than buying a home and two others for rental income. The rest went to savings and unfortunately they did not have any financial savvy and missed out on the biggest heyday of stock market earnings so earned very little in interest, dividends etc.
Their working class ethos rubbed off on me and I started with three paper routes at age nine and by fourteen I was working forty hours a week and going to high school. This continued through until I graduated University and entered a semi-profession that has kept me living a very comfortable life. My field is very challenging and interesting but I have been working in it since I graduated when I was 21 and I am exhausted. Since age 40 I have wanted to retire early. I am on track to retire fully at age 54 with a fair degree of comfort but every so often I have strong urges to retire now at 45.
My partner shakes his wise sweet head often at me and tells me we have an excellent life and why would we put this at risk by retiring so young (he is three years my junior). He is right I know but I can't help fantasizing and often. I am now upper middle class and he has always been so, coming from a family of minor affluence that lost much of their money due to overspending and giving in to their every whims. My partner himself is very careful with money and in fact often keeps me in check as I love to spend money on clothes, art, shoes, travel and home furnishings and often impulsively.
This book is excellent. It should be required reading for every Canadian as it explains how our pension system works and how any Canadian at any income level can have a decent retirement due to the strength of our programs, a bit of diligent saving and for some, continued part time work until older age. The author is also able to argue against many myths such as needing 70 percent of our pre-retirement income to be comfortable. He shows us that the number is closer to 40 to 60 percent. He gives very systematic instructions on how to proceed with retirement at any age and explains investing wisely and cautiously.
I cannot express how helpful this book has been to me. Thanks to my sweetie for purchasing it for me and his sweet inscription:
"Dear Jaidee....We only have ten more years to go and then we are free from earthly toil"
Ten years is more than doable but man oh man I still want to hit the lottery :)
2016 Honorable Mention Read
I grew up in a working class family where both my parents were industrious new immigrants to this country. When they came to Canada in the late 1960s there was lots of work and they established themselves through diligence and initial difficulties and what sounds like minor ethnic discrimination against them. My father worked himself up to middle management (with a grade six education) and my mother ran three different businesses at her peak. They established themselves with the wealth of the upper middle class but as they both grew up in dire poverty they spent very little other than buying a home and two others for rental income. The rest went to savings and unfortunately they did not have any financial savvy and missed out on the biggest heyday of stock market earnings so earned very little in interest, dividends etc.
Their working class ethos rubbed off on me and I started with three paper routes at age nine and by fourteen I was working forty hours a week and going to high school. This continued through until I graduated University and entered a semi-profession that has kept me living a very comfortable life. My field is very challenging and interesting but I have been working in it since I graduated when I was 21 and I am exhausted. Since age 40 I have wanted to retire early. I am on track to retire fully at age 54 with a fair degree of comfort but every so often I have strong urges to retire now at 45.
My partner shakes his wise sweet head often at me and tells me we have an excellent life and why would we put this at risk by retiring so young (he is three years my junior). He is right I know but I can't help fantasizing and often. I am now upper middle class and he has always been so, coming from a family of minor affluence that lost much of their money due to overspending and giving in to their every whims. My partner himself is very careful with money and in fact often keeps me in check as I love to spend money on clothes, art, shoes, travel and home furnishings and often impulsively.
This book is excellent. It should be required reading for every Canadian as it explains how our pension system works and how any Canadian at any income level can have a decent retirement due to the strength of our programs, a bit of diligent saving and for some, continued part time work until older age. The author is also able to argue against many myths such as needing 70 percent of our pre-retirement income to be comfortable. He shows us that the number is closer to 40 to 60 percent. He gives very systematic instructions on how to proceed with retirement at any age and explains investing wisely and cautiously.
I cannot express how helpful this book has been to me. Thanks to my sweetie for purchasing it for me and his sweet inscription:
"Dear Jaidee....We only have ten more years to go and then we are free from earthly toil"
Ten years is more than doable but man oh man I still want to hit the lottery :)
August 21, 2013
A good book that provides a no nonsense, mathematical, and logical approach to figuring out how much we need to retire. But what I really liked about was that it was not all financial planning rhetoric, there was advise to live life while we are living and working not pining away for some utopian retirement while forgetting to live and enjoy life along the way.
February 9, 2022
This book was written in 2013, so it is not as useful as it was nine years ago. Vettese does not address the current problem of inflation, for example, so although I love the optimistic outlook, I am not sure if we can embrace that perspective to the same degree anymore. What remains useful is the explanation of the subtitle, Why You Could Be Better Off Than you Think, which is an analysis of the changes in expenses as one grows older, and the subsequent likelihood that you will require less money than in your working years. His assumptions that the mortgage is paid, and the kids are independent are hopeful, but given that, a Canadian retirement for earners of good wages looks pretty good. For those that did not make/save a lot of money, Vettese contends that the combination of CPP/QPP and OAS and GIS will likely result in a fully replaced, or even higher income. Vettese also writes generally about investment options: RRIFs vs Annuities, and how to manage risk. He does not talk about individual stocks or provide specific investment advice.
I like the writer's optimism, which is a distinct difference from the usual doom-and-gloom Canadians -don't -save -enough, Canadians-have-too-much-debt financial pages. I think he might be too optimistic now, for these high inflation times, but I will keep it as a useful reference.
I like the writer's optimism, which is a distinct difference from the usual doom-and-gloom Canadians -don't -save -enough, Canadians-have-too-much-debt financial pages. I think he might be too optimistic now, for these high inflation times, but I will keep it as a useful reference.
July 28, 2019
Written by two highly respected Canadian actuaries, this book uses statistical methods to debunk several generally-accepted beliefs about retirement in Canada. The book shows how very few Canadians retire in poverty or face exorbitant end-of-life care costs due to the social services provided by the federal government. It also shows how you can retire on about 50% of your pre-retirement working income (reduced tax burden and reduced expenses) using a 5.5% safe withdrawal rate. All of the book's conclusions are supported by extensive statistical analysis. This is an older book, so it makes references to some upcoming tax changes that never actually happened.
July 8, 2019
I'm not sure if I learned that much from the book. I'm one of those who has been financially planning for retirement since beginning work. I also have an interested in personal finance, so I'm pretty much on top of the rules. The book was published a few years ago, so I wonder how much is out of date.
Even though I didn't learn much, I think it was valuable to read the book to be sure I'm not missing anything.
Even though I didn't learn much, I think it was valuable to read the book to be sure I'm not missing anything.
May 7, 2023
Obviously a bit dated now, but I thought I'd still give it a try.
Unfortunately it's too dry and too long. I would read for a bit and pick it up weeks later, only to forget what "pillar 1/2/3" and "phase 1/2/3" each represented.
I'm interested to see if the government makes adjustments according to the ways they've predicted.
Unfortunately it's too dry and too long. I would read for a bit and pick it up weeks later, only to forget what "pillar 1/2/3" and "phase 1/2/3" each represented.
I'm interested to see if the government makes adjustments according to the ways they've predicted.
February 19, 2024
A good book (but maybe outdated) about the big picture of retirement in Canada. My biggest take away of this book is that we need around 60% of annual preretirement income during retirement year to retire comfortably. This helps me to set a target toward my financial freedom
May 27, 2013
The author does seem to capture what I suspect most Canadians will be doing in this generation.
I was unimpressed by how he seemed to write that "People who focus their attention too much on planning for their retirement risk missing too much of their life before retirement, and that’s a tragedy".
His basic premise seems to be that most Canadians will only save a small portion of possible RRSP and TFSA savings that they could, in one example using 3.8% of total salary and in another example 6% of total salary for RRSP savings. His conclusions were that most people would not be retiring at the age of 65 and would therefore have to retire up to two years later.
With the maximum amount being the lower of 18% of your salary to a maximum of $23,820/person it seems to me that Canadians in the middle and upper tier pay brackets should easily be able to save a higher proportion of their salaries without unduly affecting their standard of living.
I still live life very well and enjoy my many activities with my young family. I suspect that I could do the extreme early retirement at 45 but as the author suggests will probably wait a few years longer just to make absolutely sure that we will have a similar standard of living in retirement.
The real tragedy in my opinion is that people will work additional decades at jobs they do not really want to, paying for things they do not need, when they could have consumed less, saved more, and spent more time with their loved ones and/or doing what they really wanted to do with the time they have.
I was unimpressed by how he seemed to write that "People who focus their attention too much on planning for their retirement risk missing too much of their life before retirement, and that’s a tragedy".
His basic premise seems to be that most Canadians will only save a small portion of possible RRSP and TFSA savings that they could, in one example using 3.8% of total salary and in another example 6% of total salary for RRSP savings. His conclusions were that most people would not be retiring at the age of 65 and would therefore have to retire up to two years later.
With the maximum amount being the lower of 18% of your salary to a maximum of $23,820/person it seems to me that Canadians in the middle and upper tier pay brackets should easily be able to save a higher proportion of their salaries without unduly affecting their standard of living.
I still live life very well and enjoy my many activities with my young family. I suspect that I could do the extreme early retirement at 45 but as the author suggests will probably wait a few years longer just to make absolutely sure that we will have a similar standard of living in retirement.
The real tragedy in my opinion is that people will work additional decades at jobs they do not really want to, paying for things they do not need, when they could have consumed less, saved more, and spent more time with their loved ones and/or doing what they really wanted to do with the time they have.
July 15, 2014
And very sensible book analyzing how we should prepare ourselves for retirement.
Lots of information about where your money comes from for the retirement : saving, investment, pension, government.
Also, about how much money is needed in different stages of retirement.
Then concluded that Canadians are better off than they think financially in their retirement stage.
So relax,just enjoy the present, enjoy what you like to do.
Lots of information about where your money comes from for the retirement : saving, investment, pension, government.
Also, about how much money is needed in different stages of retirement.
Then concluded that Canadians are better off than they think financially in their retirement stage.
So relax,just enjoy the present, enjoy what you like to do.
July 29, 2016
Very good, hot-off-the-press, and Canadian - my favorite kind of personal finance book. Basically, we (as Canadians) worry too much about not having enough money in retirement. This book addresses that quite successfully, imo. I (specifically) am doing everything right and I can continue to not worry too much about my personal finances - everything is going well and according to plan.
September 3, 2014
The 1st portion of the book much more interesting and helpful. These guys are actuaries and their investment advice reflects that.
September 12, 2015
Well written advice about how to plan for retirement. We are going to rethink some of our numbers with this data.
April 29, 2017
Good insight and well written. Now please Bill, as our finance minster, increase the TFSA limit!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews