Hands in your Pockets

If you cruise the net and ask the question "How much money do I need to retire" then you'll spend a lot of time reading reports from banks, insurance companies, investment firms and other official bastions of financial hopelessness.

In the early nineteen nineties, so called self made advisors were preaching at "free" seminars that we Canadians would need a couple of million dollars to retire, and not to expect anything from the Canada pension plan or the old age pension scheme.

In 1991, according to one statistical website, the average wage of a Canadian was around $35,000 and if one of those individuals was attending the related seminar by the Papes, Costellos or Givens of that time, they would have been educated as to the hopelessness of their situation, however, that very hope could be purchased, in book or newsletter form, from the speakers minions at the end of the show.

"I'm not a financial advisor, but I play one on TV"

I don't think times have changed in the last fifteen years as far as the financial industry selling hope, they are slick and sophisticated and basically want to extract your hard earned cash from you with their MERs, commissions and fees.

As they preach that "you can't do it alone" and "we'll help" you have to take a step back and smell the coffee, see the wood from the trees and do anything you can to hold onto your money. They will use loss leader methods to snare you into one of their custom plans, lock your money away with skewed past performance figures and then quietly extract their two or three percent each year while your money stagnates.

In one pocket, out the other, that extra couple of percent you carefully save ends up on an insurance company or banks profit sheet.

So, take a deep breath, because you can do it, you don't need a couple of million bucks (unless you're going to retire at 30) and you don't need to pay, over and over, for the advice and guidance from the financial industry. All you need to do is start thinking for yourself about money, dedicate some serious time to the topic, use online resources (with a pinch of salt) and be strategic.

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