u/11kestrel

I was visiting some friends the other day and investing came up in discussion after we announced that my spouse and I retired in our early 50s.

It reminded me that many people still believe investing is some black magic voodoo and trust "their guy" to manage their investments, without knowing the absolute basics of almost anything and how much it costs them.

Things such as: the different accounts, basket/market ETFs versus individual equities, Expenses/MERs, low cost Index funds (and the compounded savings on fees), fixed income, and all that stuff.

Are there a few links, preferably easy to read for laypeople to get a good grasp on the concepts? I find that discussing with people I often get a glazed look and think that them reading something well written on their own time might be easier for some.

Any links that people can recommend that they either used themselves or shared with others for a similar purpose?

Was at a farmers market this week and an artisanal maker had a booth for their products. They specialize in gin and liqueur. It was quite costly, more than 2x the going price of a "good" bottle but thought I'd give it a try as I like small ma-pa outfits making a go. To give you and idea, $37 per 375ml bottle (12 fl oz). I bought a bottle of gin and a bottle of liqueur. Lady hands me the keypad for my CC. The machine had TIP ranges from 15-25%. I mean, this is a retail not a serving restaurant. It's not like you're mixing me drinks and waiting on me. WTF.

Hi thread, long time lurker never posted here before.

I have been a casual collector for about 30 years or so, but realized that I don't have much desire to continue in the hobby and would rather get some value out of them and go to someone that is more actively into the hobby. To be honest, I have too many expensive hobbies 😄

What are the practical way for people to downsize/sell their collections? I am NOT an ebay person (cancelled my account many years ago). Is there any other kind of marketplace that is the go-to? Back in the day, I either purchased from local dealers or directly from the RCM.

To be clear, I am NOT specifically looking to sell in this thread (commercial activity) I am asking what venues people usually use to do such in this day and age.

It seems to me when we were going through our plan with our advisor, he went to a screen where the year-year data was broken down by the month for the chosen scenario.

Basically, when we met at the end of May it showed various balances that the system had us projected for at that time (presumably, just the finer detail broken from the calculated year-year).

For the life of me, I can't remember where that was or how to get there. I am looking under "projections" (summary/compare) but I can't find it. Or am I misremembering and that doesn't exist?

How did you change the mindset into withdrawing from your portfolio and no longer accumulating and making peace with that?

Early 50s and I retired about 6 months ago. In preparation to do this, we had a full-blown financial plan from a legit fee only CFP and did my own planning with Adviice which correlated very well. So logically there is really no problem...or shouldn't be. Even including extreme stress tests, it should work. 100% success and a large over funded. Back in January the CFP told us outright "Retire. Today if you want." So I did end of Feb and Mrs end of May.

We have very little for mandatory spending as we own our home and have zero debt other than utilities, food and taxes. Pretty much everything else is flexible or discretionary to a large point.

That said, I am having a real mental block.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around withdrawing from investments. I know according to our plan we're going to have to start next year just for tax planning purposes, but darn it I'm having a hard time getting my head around it. I think part of it is from that as a young person we didn't have a lot of means and my parents lived paycheck to paycheck along with other family stresses. I even find myself looking at part-time jobs for spending money LOL

People that have gone through this: what did you do to get past the mental block if you had one?

I am well aware that logically it doesn't make much sense but it seems hard for me to change that mindset. Is it just a matter of "that's the plan and just execute dummy" and it gets easier or what did you do to cross that bridge? Is it common and goes away?

So this might be a dumb question, but I appreciate the insight of people that do this.

Back in the day I used to use paypal as an online payment method, but I left them after some really bad experiences.

Now, I need to send someone a small amount (<$100) in USD. I mostly deal with Wealthsimple - I do NOT have a US$ account, just general chequing/investments. Is there a simple, low fee way to do this? Alternatively, I'm looking to sell something online to someone in the US. What's the easiest way to go the other way around? Doesn't have to necessarily be free (exchange obviously) but low cost would be ideal. Thanks!

I seem to recall the last big presentation WS mentioned they were rolling out trusted or authorized traders for households. Has there been any updates/news on that I may have missed? My wife and I are under the same household but I don't see any way for me to do any trading under her accounts.

Don't get out very often but finally getting together with some friends for a long overdue beer and a bit of food.

Any good Tuesday pub specials to share?

Background: Recently retired, 50ish. We are not huge cruisers, but enjoy the more luxury/small ship side. Did Regent several times (our current fave) but might consider trying Oceania or Viking as something different for our next ocean voyage.

Did Azamara last year but it was "meh." I know they're not on the same level as Regent but it was "OK"

Budget is not unlimited, but we know it's not going to be cheap.

That in mind, we want to do a Galapagos cruise while we're fairly young to enjoy it. I know the islands truly are the destination and the ship is secondary, but we still want to have great food, good drinks, *maybe* a pool for relaxing and other amenities. I know the ships are small and limited so basically, who should we be looking at if we want the ship to be as good/nice as it can? We're not huge show people but do like port talks, expert discussions. I know we're not going to get a Broadway show on a Galapagos cruise and that suits us OK lol!

Very early planning here. We're probably not looking at 2027,...likely 2028+ at this point. We have an elderly cat that we're going to wait for her to pass before we do any trips more than a weekend long. So curious as to people that have done this or have done all the research and what they can share.

Quit my job (early retirement) a few months ago and decided I needed a cheap little econobox for running around town and going to the closest city (about 15 min drive). Reliability was uptmost importance and didn't want to deal with timing belt again (just changed the one on our other car) and settled on a local private sale 2018 3 Hatchback (sport?) that had 54,000KMs. Full records since new, always dealer serviced and included original bill of sale. I paid a small premium for it IMHO, but it was in such nice shape I decided it was worth it.

Since I do all my own vehicle maintenance, did my first oil change yesterday. What a nice easy car to work on. Compared to our Subaru and my Porsche, it's a super easy and quick oil change. Probably a 20-30 minute job if you're all set up. It's so nice to have the filter so close to the oil drain plug and not have to reach up around hot exhaust. At first I wasn't a fan of the maintenance reminder light, but the more I think of it I think I'll be using it.

Anyhow, no questions or anything here just saying it's a really nice car to do basic work on if you're interested in trying to do your own general easy maintenance. Very happy with this little car.

My wife and I recently retired and no longer have medical coverage for insurance. It's going to be out of our own pocket from now on. We deal with a small local pharmacy. I like the people, but I'm more interested in costs now. Is there a way to check what prescription drug prices cost? I went to the costco pharmacy website and started to create an account but it looks like it wants a client or script number which I don't have yet. Just trying to decide if it's worth switching our business. The biggest downside I see is having to deal with the crowds and parking lot for a quick zip in, but it might be worthwhile. Anyone have real world experiences to share? Fairly standard drugs, like generic blood pressure, GERD stuff, etc.

E: Looks like it's pretty much unanimous here, we'll give it a shot. Thanks for the input.

I think I am missing something blindingly obvious here. Going through the planning with the platform, we have selected CPP @ 70, and it shows on the projection chart, but when I scroll down to the details, for income in the "CPP/EI" column, it's 0 all the way down.

Expanding income, the only ones with data (not 0) are "Other taxable Income, Interest, registered withdrawals and contributions" columns. Obviously it knows I'm taking CPP but where is it showing in the details? I assume it's buried in the "other" for some reason?

https://preview.redd.it/fyp9wso1j29h1.jpg?width=2393&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10c87f5dd91f43e1d9729afb23be6656531f5859

It would potentially be helpful and maybe a feature update if you could hotlink/click the success bar chart year and have it take you right to the data to know where it's pulling it to populate the chart. Likewise, on the details maybe the same thing, even if it's redundant.

I buy the big boxes of Neo-Citrin which seem to really help me when having a cold and usually last better part of a year in our house.

I have been looking at the pharmacy for the last couple months to buy another box but they don't have any. The person behind the counter "thinks" they still carry them but just out of stock.. but it's been since something like March-April now. Anyone know if they are maybe just seasonal or something?

As subject asks - I have zero foreseeable need to have any new credit and would like to "freeze" my credit just in case anything nefarious happens. Is it possible to do this? It looks like it is in the USA but not sure about Canada.

My CFP came up with a couple of scenarios which we locked. If I copy them, can I then play with discovery in the "copied" scenario? I just want to be sure because when I go back to discovery the "scenario" on the top is gone, that only shows under projections but I don't want to risk mucking with the numbers/data the CFP used when planning. I don't want to get into the tables in projections because, well, I find that really clunky and while powerful probably one of the weakest points of the interface of the platform.

Alternatively, I think a good feature might be the ability to download/archive a full plan (all sections) so you have that as a full backup in case things get screwed up and you don't have to start from scratch.

I've sailed RSSC 3-4 times now and like the product, even the one time the ship we were on (Voyager) crashed into the pier in Civitavecchia and made us miss our Pompeii excursion!.

BUT

I'm really not sure if the RSSC value proposition works as well for us anymore especially since they got rid of the included business class airfare for international. And now that Oceania is adult only, that is a HUGE plus for us. We never really ran into kids on RSSC that were a problem but it is certainly not impossible especially on cruises over the holidays or week long in the Caribbean. Oceania seems to capture 90% of what we like with Regent, and we've met a few people on RSSC that said they actually preferred Oceania.

For those of you that sailed both, I'd like an honest pro/con between the lines? I really like the open bars on RSSC but to be honest most of the drinks we have are nothing fancy, wine and mix cocktails. Perhaps the odd highball but the requirements are not top-shelf by any means. Thinking about Panama Canal, *maybe* Trans-Pacific but this is still super early days.

Morning! Question I have is regarding income from non-registered accounts and tax implications. The software is modelling us to take our income from our non-registered account which is fine and is giving us our anticipated tax rate for the coming years, but in our non-reg account we have some holdings which currently have some high (90-120%) returns (market value vs book). So, let's say we want to withdraw $100K from our non-reg, if I take that as profits from something up 80% that's going to have a huge capital gains vs something up 10%. How does the system model this? I'm suspect I'm missing something here because this has to come up quite often.

Anyone know what's going on in that freezer aisle at Costco that's been blocked/tarped off for a while now? Is it repairs or are they revamping that whole big aisle? I actually have a friend that works there but I *always* forget to ask so thought I'd ask here.

Makes for mayhem when it's busy with stuff stacked along the sides of the aisles and the aimless zombies abandoning their carts in the middle of the aisle when the go to get something "for just a sec" which is usually a minute and blocks the area.