Tackling the challenges of benefits provision for employees over age 65
by Kim Siddall
Increasing longevity, better health and the elimination of mandatory retirement means many Canadians are delaying their retirement past age 65, presenting employers with both advantages and challenges for managing benefits for this unexpected segment of their workforce.
Statistics Canada’s last census indicated that one in four Canadian seniors were still working in some capacity past the traditional age of retirement, whether driven by choice or economic necessity. This finding was echoed by Sun Life’s last Unretirement index last year, which pointed to a growing number of Canadians who fully expect to still be working full time at age 66. In fact, 2015 marked the first year in the seven years of the study that more respondents expected to be working full time at 66 than those who expected to be fully retired. Read more 
The Huge Opportunity of Millennial Home Buyers
Property sellers, builders and managers are set to cash in as members of Generation Y finally find the money for a mortgage down payment
Amid predictions for a modest 2016, home prices in many Canadian markets continue to soar, and much of the growth is coming from an unlikely source: millennials. Canadians ages 16 to 36 are over nine million strong; they’re now the largest cohort in our workforce, and they’re entering their prime home-buying years.
Frank Magliocco, Canadian real estate lead at PwC, does not expect high demand—and related house price increases—to ease up any time soon in hot urban markets like Vancouver and Toronto. He points to growth in condos, rental apartments and mixed-use urban developments as proof that young buyers don’t fear big mortgages (or big leases): “In large part, [growth] is driven by millennials wanting to go to where the action is.”
Here’s why young buyers are able to get into the market—and who stands to gain from it.
79% of millennials still believe owning a home is attainable according to a 2016 poll, despite mushrooming prices raising barriers for first-time buyers
Get the facts on fixed income
MoneySense’s Invest for Success event brings people together with investing experts to hear their hard-worn advice.
In this video from the conference, Stephen Lingard, portfolio manager with Franklin Templeton Investments, talks about how bond investing has changed in the past 10 years, with returns from fixed-income falling to about 2% from 40-year historical levels of around 8%.
“From a return perspective, we’re going to count on them less, it’s really as more of a portfolio diversifier,” he says.
He also gives his outlook for Canadian equities for the next five to seven years.
Follow this link to watch the video
Investors: Don’t do dumb stuff when it gets hard
Try not to abandon your strategy as soon as it lags the alternatives.
Given the choice between a simple solution and a complex one, which would you choose? When it comes to investing, many people seem bent on making their portfolios needlessly complicated.
My blog—canadiancouchpotato.com—includes a model portfolio with just three exchange-traded funds (ETFs): one covering Canadian stocks, another for foreign stocks and a third for bonds. This trio of funds includes more than 3,000 companies from around the world, plus hundreds of bonds of all maturities. It’s super-cheap with a fee of less than 0.20%. And during the last 10- and 20-year periods it would have returned about 6% to 7%. Yet so many investors have an unshakable urge to tinker with it.
I routinely get emails that go something like this: “I like your Couch Potato portfolio, but I would like to make some changes. What do you think about adding some gold, small-cap stocks, commodities, real estate, global bonds, sector ETFs, infrastructure and maybe some blue-chip stocks to the mix?” I’m exaggerating, but only a little. Even those who admit they have no experience are convinced their tweaks will improve the portfolio.
Read the rest of this article from MoneySense Magazine on their website.
