No doubt that's true. What'll kill you is if you want to travel back to North America frequently. It's $1500 to $1800 a pop for a ticket and an 18 hour flight to Toronto (well route.. there are no direct.)so basically with $25K a tear derived from half a mil stashed away you could live happier than making half a mil annually in toronto and waiting for your old bat of a wife to grab it from you
At age 40, how much should the average person have in their retirement account?
- Thread starter poorboy
- Start date
And remember if you DID have kids, and they showed some talent, and you want them to have the same opportunities in life that you had--then you're going to be sending them overseas to university at international student rates, plus Canadian living costs.
I guess you could handle that by setting aside enough for that eventuality, or else plan to move back to Toronto and work for 4-5 years to put your kids through school (and move back 6 months ahead of school so they get local rate tuition).
I guess you could handle that by setting aside enough for that eventuality, or else plan to move back to Toronto and work for 4-5 years to put your kids through school (and move back 6 months ahead of school so they get local rate tuition).
I guess? Another consideration.. you need to maintain 6 months a year residency in Canada to have OHIP. So that fantasy life in Phils might prove suddenly expensive if you developed a major medical condition. You can buy quality medical care in Phils, and while it's cheaper than buying it in the USA, quality care isn't dirt cheap anywhere in the world.
It might be a good way to spend your retirement years during the period you expect to be reasonably healthy.. say up to 60 or 65. The older you are obviously the bigger chance you have of being screwed by unexpected bad medical news.
If I was facing a $10k/year retirement in Canada though.. I'd probably take my chances in phils!
You can buy private health insurance overseas for not much $$...if you need serious work, you can reclaim OHIP in 153 days...
Ahh stepping on your gravytrain I see. Govt is not always more efficient, but large pension plans mostly do better then individuals. If you want a good example of govt efficiency, look at health care. Compare Canada to the US, what is more cost efficient? To some extent pensions are a similar issue. All the individual plans chew up too much administration and waste. Before you go bitching about lack of govt efficiency, please point to me a private offering that will out perform CPP in with the same level of security?
You need to compare apples to apples
Canadians are dying waiting for surgeries, Americans are not.
No gravy train here: I'm happy to pull my own freight and take care of my family on my own. Me thinks it's the socialists who want the gravy train of income redistribution so have a look in the mirror.
I hardly think the health care system is an example of efficiency: we are getting close to a crisis here but no politician will talk about this or the hard choices that are going to have to be made soon enough. Oh and don't forget the post office while you are touting goverment efficiencies [or the LCBO].
It is an outdated myth that the Canadian medical system is so wonderful [even though all the Americans I meet talk about this when they find out you are from Canada]. I have seen several studies that debunk this old wives tale with a numerical analysis of Canada's ranking in healthcare provision vis a vis cost effectiveness. Government will never be an efficient provider given the inherent bureacracy that is needed. All it does is create more bloodsucking government union employees that requires higher taxes and leave less money to go towards other needed areas [like healthcare].
I would take my chances with picking my own investments and as far as safety, look out your window at any one of the banks. I would trust them to hold my investments more than some goverment agency subject to political control and manipulation. Banks are accountable to their shareholders and the law while politicians can break promises and shuffle funds around if they so choose. Private enterprise has a long term view while politicians idea of long term is four years at most.
Just investing in the stock market with a diversified portfolio will do better than CPP if you manage your allocations appropriately for your age [as opposed to being perpetually in a defensive posture in your CPP investment mix that you have no say over].
Stop looking for the goverment to do more for you and to take money from others to go to the less successful. You should stand on your own two feet and take care of yourself. Help should be available for the truly needy, not the unionized and unmotivated.
D.
+1
Nottyboi isn't bothered by facts since he just spouts old union and socialist bromides: "Canadian healthcare is better than in the US".
He also thinks that the healthcare system in Canada is an example of efficiency and I don't know how someone can really believe this given how the system is spiralling out of control with costs and decaying care.
D.
Considering my net worth is in the 90th percentile of the CDN average, I doubt I am looking for a handout. What I am looking for is what is best for the country. If private pension plans fail, who ends up footing the bill? Where did the magic $5 billion come from to bail out the GM pension plan, a money tree? A genie? A magic beanstalk? No it came from TAXPAYERS. So rather then waste money on these schemes that have the burden of delivering a profit to the banksters, why not just 2x a system that already exists? It will incur ZERO additional overhead. You can still pick your own investments, and you may very well be better at it then government. But we are talking about the AVERAGE Canadian here, who is CLUELESS on financial matters. A base level of retirement income needs to be in place for EVERYONE and the cheapest way to do it is CPP. Yes the Canadian healthcare system is not very efficient, especially when you compare it to other SOCIALIZED SYSTEMS. Part of it is because we vastly over pay our doctors and executives.
It's amazing and a testament to Canada that someone with your outdated socialist tendancies can be successful. Lucky for you that you aren't in a worker's paradise like Cuba, Russia or China with their wonderful governments that take care of most of their citizens' decisions for them.
Don't resent the banks: their share prices help hold up the pension plans in the long run and the banks [along with those dreadful doctors and execs] pay disproportionate amounts of taxes that fund the inefficiences of the government and support your interventionist schemes.
As far as GM, the government decided they had to support them since the fallout of not doing so was too much to consider. Maybe you should be railing against your union brethren who used their collective bargaining to extort unsustainable benefits from the car companies and thus contributed to the NA car co.s problems?
The cost efficiences you refer to for expanding CPP are potentially tempting but the goverment should stick to providing essential services and there is already a safety net in place to care for the truly needy [i.e. CPP, OAS, GIS, etc.].
D.
Don't resent the banks: their share prices help hold up the pension plans in the long run and the banks [along with those dreadful doctors and execs] pay disproportionate amounts of taxes that fund the inefficiences of the government and support your interventionist schemes.
As far as GM, the government decided they had to support them since the fallout of not doing so was too much to consider. Maybe you should be railing against your union brethren who used their collective bargaining to extort unsustainable benefits from the car companies and thus contributed to the NA car co.s problems?
The cost efficiences you refer to for expanding CPP are potentially tempting but the goverment should stick to providing essential services and there is already a safety net in place to care for the truly needy [i.e. CPP, OAS, GIS, etc.].
D.
Yes it is likely Canadians die waiting. Americans die without even getting on the list because they cannot afford the treatment. So you have people with benefits, they get treatment and even get treatment that is not required, while the poor are left to die. If those Canadians were wealthy enough, they could have gone to the US for treatment.. if they could not afford it, what makes you think they would not be better off under the US system. I agree Canadian healthcare is not that great. I know of people that travelled to Europe to get better treatment for less money on non-OHIP covered procedures. So my view of the Canadian medical establishment is it is a big scam. But the US is an even BIGGER scam. We should just copy the european model..
Details please. American health coverage at least is expensive if you want quality care. I'd be curious what you suggest. This notion of walking away from life and living on a tropical island with a hot young woman has never ending appeal. But in my job if I vanished for 5 years it would be hard to come back again. So you want to know you have enough saved to cover all reasonable contingencies.
Few canadians die waiting, that's a myth. The canadian system is really pretty g good at delivering critical care. The waiting lists that are horrendously long are all for non life saving surgery precisely because the canadian system prioritizes life saving care.
Fundamentally in the u.s. when you queue jump by paying more you are bumping a poorer person with a greater need. Maybe not on that exact moment, but in the aggregate, by building a system that caters to the comfort of the rich at the expense of the health of the poor.
Fundamentally in the u.s. when you queue jump by paying more you are bumping a poorer person with a greater need. Maybe not on that exact moment, but in the aggregate, by building a system that caters to the comfort of the rich at the expense of the health of the poor.
The Canadian system has to prioritize since resources are extremely limited. Many suffer due to this forced waiting due to the inefficiences and the slavish clinging to the belief that all must have the same health care. The original tenet was that all should have access to basic healthcare [not equal for all]. All the better healthcare systems in the world have a public portion to offer care to all as well as a private stream for those able and willing to pay for separate service.
You might as well be bitter about rich people driving nice cars as kvetching about how they can buy better healthcare service. You don't have to like it but it is how the world works so just deal with it.
I'm going to start a movement against tall people since it's not fair how they got the height. We should have everyone be the same height: it's more fair and just.
D.
The situations you compare are not matters of life or death so as usual you are showing how obtuse you are. Why don't you just ask "why do they not eat cake?"
