Author Archives: ernie

You do not Need a Million to Retire

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You do not Need a Million to RetireMost people think they need a huge stash of cash that is well invested to ensure that they have sufficient funds to retire on. The fact of the matter is that you do not need a million to retire even though this is counter to what most investment advisers would suggest. They do the simple calculation of looking at the income you feel you need, and use the prevailing expected interest rate income to calculate how much is needed. For example if you want $75,000 income during retirement each year, with $35,000 coming from pensions, then $40,000 must come from your investments.

If you use the approach that the advisers suggest at today’s interest rates of say 3%, then you would need to have – $1.4 million saved for retirement and your portfolio would need to be fully invested earning 3% on average. If you began early enough you might have saved this much, but most people start late and do not save nearly enough. How will you get by in retirement.

You do not Need a Million to Retire – need less Money?

If your income is $75,000 today, do you really need the same amount in retirement? Chances are you will not, since you are not commuting to work every day and you have more time to do some of things that you might hire someone to do for you. Everything from dry cleaning to down sizing to one car costs less. Lets assume that you only need $65,000 to live on instead of $75,000. Now using the same assumptions as before regarding pension income you only need $30,000 extra income and save -$1.0 million. Still high!

You do not Need a Million to Retire – Interest Rates

Interest rates have been low for the past 5 years. They are  starting to rise at the time of this update. However if you are laddering your investments, you will be able to invest your maturing funds at higher interest rates. Let’s assume you can increase your average interest income by half a percent to 3.5%. The impact is to reduce the money you need to save down to $860,000.  Interest rates can have a major impact on your income and it is important to pay attention to this number.

You do not Need a Million to Retire – Fees and Charges

Another area to pay attention to is the fees and charges you pay for having your investments managed for you. Keep these to a minimum. these dollars are better in your pocket than your advisers.  Mutual funds charge half a percent or as much as 2% if you live in Canada. Get out of mutual funds and increase your income.

There are numerous ways to live on less than a million in savings, provided that you pay attention to the details. Make this your new job and you can expect to have more money to live on than you thought.

Best Business Web Design

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Best Business Web DesignIn our last post, we discussed some of the areas to focus on when it comes to setting up the best business websites. In this post, we wanted to discuss design issues for the best business web design for basic web sites. What are the design issues that need to be addressed? These include a basic layout that is easy to navigate, and easy for customers to find the information they need. Functionality is also important. There should be no broken links within the website and to other websites that you might link to.

Many people like fancy websites that have lots of colors and links. A basic site with great content will surpass a complex website every time in terms of visits and the ability of the owner to keep it up to date. Complex websites just take a lot more time to maintain. Customers and readers also have difficulty navigating complex web sites. They may miss important information on your site as a result. Here is some more detail.

Best Business Web Design – Keep it Simple

Maintenance of a web site means that you keep the content fresh and that updates are completed on a regular basis. If you allow customer interaction on your website, this too must be able to be maintained. You must react to your customers. Provide updates for a variety of questions posed by customers. The message is that the more functionality is provided on your site, the more time must be spent keeping it fresh.

If you allow comments, reply to those comments and address reader questions. If you are the owner of the site, then you will need to budget time to do these updates. You may need to budget to pay someone to do the work on your behalf. Keeping a website simple and straightforward will allow you to focus on the content and not on the graphics which really do not add to search engine indexation.

Best Business Web Design – Search Engine Indexation

There are many steps that SEO experts believe will help a website achieve the first page on search results. The primary solution is to have excellent content, fresh content, original content, and content that is written around the keywords that are associated with your industry and business. If you do not have this type of content, internet readers, your customers, etc will never find you using a search engine because they will never be presented with your website in the search results.

The best-designed web sites will incorporate SEO into their daily and weekly schedules of updates and adding fresh material. Other forms of advertising also may be of interest as well to increase readership. A strong social media presence on Twitter and Facebook, for example, business cards with the web site address, invoices with the web site address, etc will also help to increase traffic which in turn demonstrates to the search engines that this is a viable website.

Retirement – It is not just the Money

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Retirement - It is not just the MoneyMost people only focus on money when they think about retirement. Yes, you need to have sufficient money to enjoy your retirement. However many are not ready to retire and are being forced out. Or perhaps you have not mentally prepared for retirement. It really does not matter how much money you have. Retirement will not be what you thought it was going to be until you have mentally adjusted to being retired.

For many people, being busy and maintaining your self-worth are important attributes. Some people will turn to golf as an alternative to keep busy. Many will have hobbies that will keep them busy. Many will also just go back to work to seek the social life that they miss when they are not working. Let’s assume that you have the money thing figured out. What is the other part of the planning activity associated with retirement that must be considered?

Retirement – It is not just the Money

You have drawn up your financial plan and have discovered you could retire today with the pension you will receive and the savings that you have been able to put away. It sounds like a good news story and it is. But what will you do on your first day of retirement, the 10th day, then 100th, and so on?

We believe that you may not need to draw up a detailed plan. But you really should give some thought to how you will spend your time. Will you travel and do you have the money for that? What about volunteering? Will you golf and take out an expensive membership? These are just a few of the things that many people will consider. The bottom line is that you now have 40+ hours to fill each week that you spent commuting to work and working.

Every person will have a different plan and it will be very personal. Develop yours and then be prepared to adjust it as you gain experience with the things you like to do and even perhaps the weather or seasons. Be flexible and you should have a nice long successful retirement. Remember that someone who is active physically, engaged with other people, and participating in a variety of activities stands a much better chance of living long and in a healthy manner than someone who does not strive for these types of things.

Matching your finances for the type of lifestyle that you are looking for is also important. If you plan to travel a great deal on expensive trips, for example, then you may need to have a stronger financial plan that can provide you with the funds that you need to support your travel plans.

Retirement: Three Areas to Focus On

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Retirement: Three Areas to Focus On Retirement: Three Areas to Focus On when you are planning for your retirement. Many people do not even think about retirement until they are in their late 40’s or early 50’s and by that time it could be too late to save enough money to live the kind of life that they dreamed of in retirement. Start planning and above all saving for retirement as early as possible to avoid surprises. At the very least you will be able to retire with a pleasant nest egg, if your company or government pension plans more than make up for your savings. Too many people have counted on a company pension plan only to find that it disappears when the company goes bankrupt. Retirement: Three Areas to Focus On

Retirement: Three Areas to Focus On

These three areas that consumers should focus on are as follows:

  • Income
  • Mortgages & loans
  • Savings plans

We will discuss each one in more detail as consumers planning for retirement are forced out of jobs or find that they are being forced to retire early or other reasons such as health, supporting loved ones, and a variety of other issues.

Income – as part of your plan for retirement it’s important to understand where your income is going to come from. This could be a combination of government pension payments, employment pension payments and from your savings.

Mortgages and loans

Most people would like to retire with their home fully paid for, the car fully paid for and no other loans to be concerned about. This is an excellent objective however the reality is that the majority of people will retire owing some money. Take a very close look at the debt that you have today, how quickly you will be able to pay it off and whether you will carry any of that debt into your retirement years. Understanding the loan payments and mortgage payments and the impact it will have on your income and money left over for other activities will play a big part in helping you decide when you can financially retire.

Savings plans

Once you have looked at your income, and the debt that you will carry into retirement it is now an easy matter to figure out what savings rate you will have to achieve while you were still working in order to live the kind of retirement life that you would like during retirement. This is all about quality-of-life during retirement and ensuring that you have sufficient funds available to live that life. You may find that you need to save much more money to sustain your lifestyle or at least the lifestyle that you plan for your retirement.

Take a few minutes now to prepare initial estimates of what your income will be during retirement, what your loans and mortgage payments will be, and also your current savings and how much money per month you can expect to derive from your savings. Once you have these figures you will have a quick understanding of whether you need to go into more detail and plan for your future retirement.

Best Business Web Sites

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Best Business Web SitesThe Best Business Web Sites are not often the really glitzy sites. They offer what the customer is looking for and they inspire confidence in the company. The definition will be different for each company depending on the services and products they sell. In our opinion, there are four main attributes that a web site needs to have in order to be one of the best business web sites. We will review each of these attributes in the following post, however one item that is implied throughout is that they all have great high quality content.

This is one of the more important attributes to have both for your customers as well as for indexation by the search engines. Your readers are looking for information that can help then solve whatever problem or issue they may have. The search engines look for high quality content as one of the factors they use to ranks web sites. If your web site does not rank well, few people are going to come to your site since it will be way down the list of search results presented by the search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Fresh high quality content is definitely the way to go for your customers as well as the search engines.

Best Business Web Sites – Advertise

One of the main objectives and goals of a web site is to clearly communicate the services and the products that the company provides. This is what will provide to your customers a clear message about your company, your staff and provide information for your customers about the industry that they are in.

Best Business Web Sites – Purchase

Many web sites do not have the capability to allow customers to make direct purchases from the web site. Or pay for those purchases and also arrange for shipment. In some cases depending on the product, all of this can be automated. Unless the customer requires support of some kind they will not actually speak to a support person.

Best Business Web Sites – Support

Support is provided via the web site. The site should provide lots of information that addresses the majority of the customers common questions. There should also be a method of reaching a live support person should the need arise. Many web sites will provide a list of frequently asked questions and only after the customer has reviewed this page will they be provided with the contact information to reach a live attendant.

Best Business Web Sites – SEO

Now that you have this website with all or some of this functionality. It is important to have lots of great content that will attract the search engines and rank your content high for a variety of search engine topics. If your customers cannot find you, then your web site will have been built for very little return.

Six Significant Retirement Mistakes

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Six Significant Retirement MistakesMany people worry about their retirement, even those who are relatively secure with defined pension plans or large retirement savings. They worry about making mistakes with their retirement that would cause them to lead a retirement life that will be less than satisfactory. They worry about whether they will have enough money during their retirement. What are the six significant retirement mistakes that consumers make while planning for their retirement or during retirement?  The following is our list of significant mistakes that many people make and you should try to avoid.

Six Significant Retirement Mistakes – The List

  • Getting taken in by a Scam or Fraud situation
  • Not Managing Cash Flow Properly
  • No Plan for Retirement
  • Avoid Planning for Inflation  During Retirement
  • Not Managing Your Health Insurance
  • Not Planning for Risk e.g. Forced Early Retirement

Six Significant Retirement Mistakes – The Details

Getting taken in by a Scam or Fraud situation – Protect yourself from scams and frauds by always seeking a second opinion from trustworthy people such as a bank manager or financial adviser. Fraudsters and scammers are everywhere, so always investigate on your own without just accepting what someone is telling you.

Not Managing Cash Flow Properly – we all have cash flow issues  from time to time. Managing your cash flow will ensure that you never get into a situation where you cannot afford to pay the bills.

No Plan for Retirement – Planning for retirement a year before you retire is a hug mistake. Start early with a plan and saving for retirement. Develop a plan so that you know exactly how much you need to set aside every year to have the quality of life you would like during your retirement years.

Not Planning for Inflation  During Retirement – inflation will always be around, it just varies from year to year. The average inflation rate appears to be around 2.5% to 3%. This means that every year prices are going up by this amount and you need to have the income to pay for it.

Health Insurance!

Managing Your Health Insurance – health insurance can be expensive and if you have not planned for it, then this could be a huge drain on your savings. Ensure you have the proper amount of health insurance in place to cover you and your family.

Not Planning for Risk e.g. Forced Early Retirement – as with all plans, they do not always turn out the way they were planned. Evaluate the risk issues with your plan. Early retirement, health issues, inflation rates, lower levels of income, major repairs to your home etc are just a few of the things you may want to consider in your risk assessment of your retirement plan.

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Best Designed Websites

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Best Designed WebsitesWe just met with a company who has a really nice web site. It is professionally done, conveys all of the information that is needed about the company, all pages seem to work and they have someone who maintains the site from a 3rd party company.  In our judgement it might qualify as one of the best designed websites, except for one aspect which was the reason they asked to meet with me. They do not have any tracking information at all on their site so they have no idea of how many hits they are getting each day or month for that matter and they have no information about who is visiting their site. They might be missing leads and potential customers. Every web site should have some form of tracking either visible or invisible to gather this kind of valuable information.

Best Designed Websites – Tracking

There are many reasons to have some kind of a stat counter on a web site. Even just basic information such as how much traffic they are receiving will help convince management that the site is worthwhile spending advertising $ on. What browsers are being used. What search engines are being used to find this web site. Where are the visitors coming from and are they returning. How long do they stay on the site? Which pages do they spend time on and how are they moving about the site? All of these questions and more can be easily answered. Use a simple tracking code placed on every page of the site.

Best Designed Websites – SEO

Know how many visitors you are receiving. Focus on bringing more traffic to your web site and be able to track it. When you make changes you will be able to see just how much impact the change has. This is extremely important if you are attempting to demonstrate results for your management team. It help justify the money and time that is being spent.

SEO or search engine optimization is all about the art of having content that the search engines index. The best designed websites must have this attribute in order to garner traffic from real customers. Don’t forget that the best designed web sites also containing tracking tools as well.

For more information  about this topic as well as designing a web site for your company, call us today. Click here of more posts about this subject.

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Retirement Saver’s Worst Mistake

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Retirement Saver’s Worst MistakeWhat is a retirement saver’s worst mistake? Many people are saving for retirement. In fact our government encourages us to save for retirement. Their sole objective is ensuring that we do not end up in poverty once we retire. They also have a variety of programs that allow consumers to borrow against their retirement savings. They can be use the money for a down payment on a home. In some cases 1st time buyers can withdraw money from a savings plan. They can use the funds as a down payment for a home. Home ownership is an important thing to do for many consumers. But taking money from your retirement savings plan could be one of your worst mistakes. Can you replace the income that this investment would generate once you retire? This is the key question that many people do not give much thought to.

Retirement Saver’s Worst Mistake

If you borrow or remove money from your retirement savings plan it can become a mistake. If you are unable to repay this loan you are jeopardizing your retirement. When you repay the loan from your retirement savings plan, savers lose the interest / dividend income that you would have accrued if the money had been left in the plan.

Savers who borrow money from retirement savings plan should treat it as a real loan. Repay not only the principle, but also the income that they lost as a result  of the investment not being available to earn income.

Even just borrowing ten thousand to use as a down payment for your home purchase can make a huge difference in your total savings especially if you have a long time to retirement. The miracle of compounding can make a huge difference to savers. The total amount you have for retirement when you finally do retire will increase substantially.

If you must borrow from your retirement savings plan for a down payment on a home or some kind of emergency, develop a plan to repay the loan along with interest. Sometimes people are better off just arranging for a regular loan instead of borrowing from their retirement savings plan.

Discuss your options with a financial planner before making this decision to ensure that you consider a number of options. If you are good with spreadsheets, you can model the impact of borrowing the money vs. taking some of the money from your retirement plan. Completed properly this will quickly show the impact of both scenarios for your particular situation. If you are not good with this sort of thing, your investment adviser may be willing to help you with these calculations.

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Web Design Ideas

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Web Design IdeasDeveloping a web site from scratch is really not required these days unless you are really want to have something unique and different. If you do, be prepared to spend lots of money and time getting the web site just right. There are lots of web design ideas available with templates to use that are already written. However many people find that using an existing template where you only need to configure and add content is the best web design idea.

A template is just that. It is a pre-designed set of web pages that can be configured to some extent. Once you add your own content including images, it becomes your own uniquely designed web site. As a result it sets you apart from all others. The message is that it is all about the original content including images and videos if you choose to add them. The template just gives you somewhere to start.

Web Design Ideas – Use A Content Management System

We use a template which will pre-config your pages. Use a content management system to manage all of your content. Editing, storage as well as a presentation to search engines and browsers. This site uses WordPress. It is a very popular CMS system, easy to use, and set up. Web site owners can focus on content. They do not need to have much in the way of computer skills.

WordPress has thousands of themes and plugins. They help you achieve whatever objectives you are looking for without having to re-invent the software. Simply select your theme or template, select and configure any plugins you want to use. You are ready to begin adding new content.

Web Design Ideas – Write your Own Content

We find small business owners like the idea of being able to add a few pages. They can make changes without having to call their web site designer. They do not need to pay for changes that they want to make. This feature can be both a time saver as well as an expense saver as well.

Some web designers will charge for every change made. This can cause web site owners to avoid updating their content. If they can write their own content, add pages and posts they have a great deal more flexibility. A content management system does this for them without their being a need to have a programming background.

Focus on the content and let the IT designers focus on the inner workings of the web site which should be minimal once the site is up and running.

For more details about web design, click here.

Investors Relying Heavily on Domestic Markets to Fund Retirement

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Domestic Markets Recent reports suggest that investors relying heavily on domestic markets to fund retirement are not following the guidance of investment advisers. The traditional doctrine of investing is to follow a diverse investment strategy which includes investing across industry’s, markets and countries. Many will spread their money over various industry groups to help them weather various financial storms. They do not seem to be investing in emerging markets nearly as much. We wondered why consumers would follow this domestic investment strategy. There are several reasons, that by coincidence the writer also agrees with and follows.

Domestic Markets to Fund Retirement

Most people rely on local news about local companies in our country or continent. The local news is far more readily available. As a consequence we know much more about our own economies than we do about other emerging market economies.  Emerging market economies are also much higher risk. They have a great deal to learn, companies come and go and they are very dependent on cheap labor as well. For our money and conservative approach, we would rather invest in companies that are based in our own country. Let the experts in that company decide if they want to pursue opportunities in other countries. This brings us to the next major point.

Country Diversity to Fund Retirement

Most large companies that pay dividends and are based in the US or Canada. They have a strategy to grow their revenues by investing in markets that are potential growth opportunities for them. They may be establishing sales opportunities or manufacturing opportunities or even both scenario’s. As a result by buying common shares of a domestic company that pays reasonable dividends you can obtain emerging market diversity while at the same time obtaining dividend income on a stock that has the potential for growth as well.

Some might consider this a conservative investment style, however for this writer it seems to be working well with dividend income, growth in the value of the stock and not needing to follow what is going on in another country were there is little news to follow. This allows this investor to sleep at night without needing to be spending a lot of time reading about something going on in another country in another culture for which we have little understanding or even none.

Emerging markets also have a habit of being very volatile. Is this something that you would like to risk your retirement savings on? If you do allow us to at least suggest diversity should be considered. Do not place all of your savings in one investment or even in one market. Spread it around after doing the appropriate research to ensure that your money is well invested and has a better than average chance of earning you a decent return.