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A Tale of Three Strategies

How Your Choices Today Shape Your Retirement and Legacy

What happens when three families start from the same place but make different decisions about where their wealth resides? In this lesson, we follow three Canadian couples, all 55 years old, each with $700,000 saved in RRSPs, a $150,000 household income, and $30,000 a year in ongoing savings. All three retire at 71 with the same goal of $125,000 in net annual income, and all three earn the same 5% rate of return. The only difference is strategy.
You’ll see how each approach affects cash flow, taxes paid before and during retirement, and, most importantly, what is left for the next generation under different longevity scenarios.

What you'll learn:

  • Why “wealth has to reside somewhere” (Nelson Nash, page 85) is one of the most important questions in financial planning
  • How mandatory RRIF withdrawals (Canada) and required minimum distributions (U.S.) affect your retirement income
  • The real trade-off of giving up tax deferral today in exchange for tax efficiency later
  • How estate values differ across the three strategies, and why life insurance changes the outcome
  • How Nelson Nash’s first golden rule, “think long range,” applies to your family’s legacy