This has been going around I’m sure, but he’s pretty amazing!

You really don’t need much to make beautiful music.

BF and I have been (and still are) discussing our future retirement plans.

How did this all come about? Innocently one day, as we were petting unicorns and singing Kum-ba-yah…

Okay. Seriously, he was hyperventilating slightly about making sure we have enough for when we retire, and not only that — to retire early to boot!

This freak out came about one night when he started reading an article on how less than 19% of Canadians have saved over $250,000 for their retirement, which in his world, is his MINIMUM level for retirement savings.

About 30% haven’t saved more than $25,000.

*BF starts hyperventilating with visions of cat food dancing through his head*

And the discussion began.

Factors to consider:

• Not going to retire in North America so cost of living in retirement will be lower
• May actually have family home(s) available in Europe to buy in full or rent at low cost
• If not, will probably stay renters for life — we’re not really interesting in owning homes
• Each of us will fairly contribute 50% to the retirement egg*

*Some people don’t find this fair, and want to base it on income %.

I agree if that works for you, like if one is earning $20k to someone’s $100k.

But we don’t have a high differential in our incomes, it’s all over $100k for each of us if we both manage to score contracts for a good part of the year.

Questions to ask when planning for retirement:

After you calm down your hyperventilating partner…..

1. At what age do you want to retire?
2. How much do you need to retire? (What are your plans?)
3. How long are we planning for as a lifespan?

Canadian Retirement Notes:

TFSA = Tax Free Savings Account (like a ROTH IRA? Someone correct me please.)
No tax break given now, more like a savings account, but you can save up to $5000/year under this plan and not pay any taxes on the profits.

RRSP = Registered Retirement Savings Plan (like a 401k I think)
Given a tax break on your income now, but you will pay the taxes later when you withdraw the dough.

Canadians, read here about the difference between the two.

#1 — AT WHAT AGE DO WE WANT TO RETIRE?

That’s always the #1 question in retirement planning: when do you want to call it a day?

He’d like to retire at around 50, perhaps 55.

Me, I always thought I’d work until 65, and have 40 years to save.

I am not really convinced I will (or want to) retire early, but I think to be on the safe side, I want to be uber conservative and plan for the big picture.

Put on top of that the fact that he’s also 10+ years older than me, and if he retires at 50, I’m going to have to retire at 40 to keep pace!

That is, if I want to, which I am not convinced of at the moment because I feel it’s too young.

Nevertheless, this is a good exercise for both of us to consider.

Still, I never say never.

Early retirement also poses another problem: I cannot withdraw anything from my RRSP until I am 65.

Therefore, if I retire at 50, I need to bank 15 years worth of cash and TFSAs to live, before I can release and draw upon my retirement funds.

#2 — HOW MUCH DO WE NEED TO RETIRE?

I am not taking Canada’s government pension plan into account here, because I am not expecting more than $300 a month from it, and that can just be a bonus to supplement my own personal plan.

So…. I always thought it was 75% of your salary, and in the good ol’ days, I could count on $60,000 a year.

That meant that I was aiming to be able to withdraw and spend at least $45,000 gross.

But then BF made a good point: right now, we kind of already live like pensioners (which we’re enjoying by the way, not doing as punishment or out of an OCD need to save).

We spend about $20,000 – $30,000 a year on net expenses which includes traveling, fun stuff like entertainment, renting a place, and splitting everything in half.

In total, $40,000 – $60,000 together as a couple.

So let’s just assume what we’re spending now is generally what we’d spend when we’re retired, around $20,000 each if we’re traveling a bit and sharing in the expenses 50/50.

BF: But I wanted to upgrade our lifestyle!

Me: Upgrade? By buying a fighter jet? Eating foie gras daily? What are we upgrading on?

BF: Well.. I mean what are we going to do when we’re retired? I wanted to travel more.

Me: I wasn’t planning on sitting around at home staring at each other 24/7! Of course we’re going to travel. How much more did you want to travel?

BF: Like take a month off. It’s going to cost around $4000 just for a trip for a month.

Me: But we’re not spending $4000 every month on a trip in your upgrade scenario right? We already do that on our current budget.

BF: True. Maybe we just stick to our monthly budget and travel more by traveling on the cheap to cities around where we’re retired.

Note: What about having those rug rats?

We are not taking kids or a family into account here, because I am assuming that my future offspring will NOT need to support me and vice versa.

This is just retirement planning for the two of us, not the whole family, and we are going to make more than $30,000 a year each on average, to be able to pay all the extra expenses that will eventually come with having a family.

#3 — HOW LONG DO WE PLAN ON LIVING?

Well, taking statistics into hand, women live longer than men and I am 10+ years younger than BF.

Chances are, I am going to need a lot more money saved than he does.

On the bright side, I also have 10+ extra years to save and plan for this eventuality.

If we retire early, let’s say BF at 60 and me at 50. I should expect to live until 90 based on my current lifestyle and family history.

That means I have to have enough banked for 40 years.

BF is probably going to live unusually long for a man, until at least 80 with his family history and current lifestyle.

He needs to bank 20 years of savings, and I think he’s already got that more than covered from what I gather.

He’s just being a worrywart.

With all that in mind….

HERE ARE MY CALCULATIONS

With my handy dandy retirement calculator in my budgeting sheet, have come up with these numbers:

Notes:

• Rate of Return: 5% — very, VERY conservative
• Years to live: 40 because I am retiring at 50, living until 90 as my best case scenario)
• Years I have to save: 23

I need to save at least $1600/month at least which is $19,200 a year.

Still, if I can save more, I’m going to do it.

But.. DAMN!!

MY ORIGINAL PLAN VERSUS MY NEW PLAN

Originally, I wanted to save about $1000 a month, or $12,000/year, but I was also assuming I had 40 years to save! Not the hypothetical 23 years.

I did not foresee NOT working for all of 2009, so I had no fresh income coming in.

That being said, I still managed to sock aside these amounts from my savings:

$5000 = TFSA 2009
$3553 = RRSP
Total: $8553

For me, it was a pretty good showing, albeit pitiful in comparison to my original goal.

Since I need to start ramping up on the savings just to get to my comfort zone, I need to make a new plan:

$5000 = TFSA 2010
$5200 = Cash & Equivalents*
$9000 = RRSP**

$19,200 to be saved

* Cash: I need this to be my hefty emergency fund as well in case I run into a repeat of 2009 with $0 in income.

** RRSP: I don’t actually know the exact amount as my taxes aren’t filed yet, but ballparking it, I think that’s what I will be allowed next year. Hopefully more.

STEP #1: ALLOCATING THE $20,000 DIVIDENDS

I need to make sure I keep enough cash flow in the business to operate as well as enough cash in my emergency fund.

I can’t put everything into retirement accounts that I cannot touch until I’m 65.

I need large amounts of money saved because I’m a freelancer without a steady cheque.

$5000 = TFSA 2010 in full
$12,000 = Cash & Equivalents saved in full*
$3000 = RRSP

$20,000 to allocate

*I need to replenish a large chunk of what I drained for 2009 in living expenses.

STEP #2: FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO WITH THE EXCESS

Any money I make above and beyond will go towards:

• Topping off my RRSP (now that I think about it, I think it’s $11,000)
• Putting the rest into cash equivalents for my emergency fund
• Bank the rest and wait for the next fiscal year to top off my plans again

Wash, rinse, repeat x 23 years.

ALTERNATIVELY: CONSIDER PASSIVE INCOME

BF’s strategy is just to save as much as possible and live off the interest.

To get $25,000 in interest, giving at least 5% a year, you need to have half a million banked.

Assuming interest rates are at rock bottom – 3% – you need at least $700,000 banked to get $21,000 in interest a year.

Maybe if I can really bank away lots of cash now into a savings account I could foresee being able to live off part of the interest.

The only thing nagging at me is all that money for no real enjoyable reason. I mean, if I saved half a million, I am selfish enough to want to spend some of it on myself during my retirement years and life, rather than just split it among my kids upon my death.

So, that’s the new FB Retirement Plan that I’ve hashed out so far: to save around $20,000 a year.

Thanks to Mint.com Blog

My notes:

Thanks to Bucksome Boomer for kicking my ass into gear to write this:

I am not surprised by the numbers, although there are factors that contribute to this:

1. Women’s work is not LESS valued, they’re just cheaper, and as a result, in more demand than we think, just based on cost alone.

Managers are smart, rational people.

If they see a woman at $40,000 a year, and a man asking for $60,000 a year, they won’t just pick on gender alone.

Sometimes it’s just economics and what will save the company money, considering that women can and will do the same job as a men.

2. Women don’t tend to enter fields that pay more money – they shy away from IT, math, sciences, engineering, finance… all things that are typically considered “male” occupations.

They’re encouraged to become teachers, designers, nurses, go into marketing, etc. I am not saying those are bad occupations or that they cannot make good money there, it’s just reality.

3. Women aren’t expected to be career women, and/or they’re out of the workforce for quite long and have to start at the bottom rung again.

It’s just that men are expected to work their whole lives and not take time off to care for their kids. I am not saying it’s a bad thing if a man stays at home, or if a woman stays at home, but boys grow up with the expectation of working their whole lives.

4. Along the lines of not being career women, we also don’t put in the hours it takes at a job.

Simply put, we don’t want to and would value our time more than money, and it isn’t our priority.

5. We don’t know how to negotiate or fight.

I had to learn all of that very quickly in the past 5 years on how to ask for more money, be more assertive, confident and to feel valued — because I am. That is not something that is taught to girls at a young age, because you always hear something like: “And what man will want you for a wife if you are going to act like that?”

Along the same lines, we aren’t expected to negotiate or fight.

I always get guff from brokers (mostly men, actually) who feel that I should just be happy getting what I get per hour, even if it’s $20/hour less than what a man would charge.

Not only because I’m a woman, but because I am young.

I don’t buy or subscribe to that stereotypical BS, and I stay firm on what I expect as a rate.

If they want me, they’ll take me, and most of the time when I’ve asked for what I wanted and was not persuaded or swayed to take less money, I’ve gotten it.

So to be honest, we kind of get what we deserve.

If we don’t ask for anything, we won’t be given raises.

If we don’t want to put in the hours to make it at that job, then we don’t deserve the salary that goes with it.

(It can be a choice too, because when I worked for a company, I CHOSE not to be a manager whose work consumes her life. I specifically did not want to rise in the ranks.)

If we decide to stay at home, we cannot expect to pop back into the workforce after 15 years at the same salary and value. We start at the bottom, just like any PERSON would, being out of the workforce for so long.

If we decide to work and try to do the work-life balance thing, we cannot expect to earn more money if we don’t ask our husbands and partners don’t help out as well, to balance the workload, or if we simply feel like we should be able to do it all.

That being said, I know women do get paid $0.75 on the $1.00, but it makes me wonder if any of the above factors don’t help contribute significantly to WHY we get paid less.

I also don’t believe in getting the job just because of race/ethnicity and gender, to fulfill some silly diversity quota.

As a manager, I’d want the person who is the best for the job, and if a man has been working his whole life, putting in the hours (and perhaps neglecting his family), asking for raises, and doing what it takes, I am going to pick his resume and his skills over a woman who hasn’t done the same thing.

It may not seem fair at first glance, but take out the gender-specific pronouns or swap them, and see if you feel differently about the above situation.

Even just looking at the graph, you can see the salary differences between races of a single gender, so gender isn’t the biggest factor in why we get paid less.

A very interesting topic indeed.

I was contacted by the jeans company “Not your daughter’s jeans” to receive a free pair of jeans and to review them on the site.

Note: I have to get it off my chest: I really hate the name. But then again, I am not really their specific target market — Moms who want to look stylish and not wear mom jeans.

I picked the Premium Lightweight — #1031 – in a Size 4 in a Straight Leg, after agonizing for an hour over what I wanted.

I just decided to go with something classic.

I normally wear a Size 6, and they said to pick a size larger than you’d normally wear (which would be a Size 8), but I went with my instincts and chose the Size 4, because I don’t have much in the way of hips or a butt, so pants in particular are tricky.

It’s only in my belly area that is a bit larger, but these jeans were a stretch mid-rise, so I figured a 4 would be ideal, and I was right.

The belly area fit perfectly. Not too tight, not too loose.

And surprisingly so did the butt!

I know this isn’t the best picture, but normally jeans make me look like I have the flattest butt known to woman.

This one, actually gave me some curves…

I am just standing awkwardly because BF is taking the picture while I am flattened against the wall trying to keep my balance.

Verdict?

FINALLY.

A company that I can now visit the website of, browse through the HUGE selection of styles, trends, washes and details, and find a pair that won’t be a hip-hugging low rise.

It takes me at least 8 months before I can track down a pair of jeans that are:

• in dark, evenly spread rinses (no weird feathering or striping)
• in straight-leg (or skinny! I couldn’t decide, but went with a classic)
• in different washes (I picked a dark rinse but they had plenty more)
• with different details on the butt

That’s it. It seems so simple that it’s laughable how hard it can be sometimes to find a pair.

The only thing I am not sure about, is that this is an American company, and as such, the jeans seem to differ from the States vs Canada.

So if you want to buy a pair, I suggest you get them in the States rather than Canada. They go under a different name here: “TUMMY TUCK JEANS”

Note: I hate this name even more than “Not your Daughter’s Jeans”.

Now for the downsides:

As for prices, I don’t know how much mine cost, but I did some research and I’m guessing around $130 – $150 USD for a pair of jeans.

The Tummy Tuck ones I scoped out at Simons here in Montreal, were $170 CAD.

So these are really what they’d call a premium denim market.

Their site is also very confusing.

I didn’t know if I was looking at the same pair of jeans 15 times, or if they were REALLY different pairs of jeans.

Site and content consistency is a problem. Not all of the jeans you click on, have a good description.

For example: These are all named “Premium Black”.

Therefore, they’re all the same pairs of jeans to me.

No?

The upside of all of this:

….is that you find the perfect pair of jeans, and I don’t wear them often enough to warrant owning more than 2 pairs (still waiting for my first pair of jeans to finally kick the bucket after years of being patched).

You know where to go to find a great pair of jeans now. It’s just a matter of figuring out which one you want!

Ate very badly.

Mostly because I just felt like being bad.

Shawarmas galore!

I’ve been eating these chicken shawarma’s (Lebanese fast food) at least twice a week.

For $6, how can you go wrong?

My BFF Miss Vickie tempted me at the store

Then I talked to my new BFF “Vickie” and purchased a bag of her delicious, addictive chips.

I find they have more flavour than the Kettle Chips, but I’ll experiment time.

Took me a week to finish the bag.

Then this brownie jumped into my hands…

To top it off, I also bought this brownie (took me 3 days to finish it).

It is one of those seriously bad for you brownies.

The kind that makes you say: “Don’t even think about what they could have possibly put into that brownie to make it so shiny, so sticky and so disgustingly good.”

This is how I roll

And in case you’re interested, this is what I bring on business trips:

Purse and carry on.

My hotel room was bigger than our apartment!

It’s just missing the kitchen, and the bathroom is a bit smaller, but it’s about the size of what we live in.