Retirement What We Have Learnt | Retiring Today Tips

Well, Tina, let me be the first person to tell you how beautiful you look in your new blue dress. - Wow, thanks Norm. And you're wearing your Panama necklace. I've known it since we passed through the canal. - From those indigenous people who were selling. them (yeah) it's almost like we're dressed ready to go to the southern islands - Wow, and I must say, Norm, you look amazing in your shirt with your palm trees - I can almost see them swaying, hear the waves splashing on that beach - Oh, it must be island time - Smelling the coconut cocktails - Oh, that must mean happy hour is coming up real soon - Every day is a happy hour - Every day is amazing in

retirement

, that was a trip exciting That was amazing - So

what

are we going to talk about

today

Tina - Well, we were thinking if we retired

today

,

what

would we do? - That's a very good question - That's what we think - We're Tina and Norman, we talk all things

retirement

and occasional travel when we're allowed (yes), so if you're new to our channel, we'd be honored for us to consider subscribing.

It really helps us reach a broader YouTube audience. Can you believe it, Norm? We

have

been retired for over 6 years, so this is what we would do if it were today. No wonder my hair is falling out. What would we do? Norm. The first thing we would do, Tina, we would move to a cheaper city (yes). ) to reduce   our living costs and if we had a family member in a cheaper city, we would move to that city   - That would make it even better, right? - We would be saving money - Yes, we would also move to a house that had a good walk score now by that we mean a good way to walk to the supermarket and pharmacy and if there was a coffee shop nearby it would be a big plus - It would be a great thing to do - Yes, but at least it could cover our daily shopping and any medical needs, couldn't it? - Another thing we would do immediately because we didn't do this in the first few years.

We would sell 1 of the 2 cars we had because you only need one car and if you think you need 2 cars when you are retired, you don't. It took us too long, didn't it, to sell it? And think about it, you

have

the car insurance, you have the maintenance costs. If you had the gas, you'll save a lot of money by getting rid of the second car, so that's what we'd do. Yes, we would also increase our exercise to at least an hour a day from day one when we retired, we didn't. Get it, here we are doing it now - We enjoy the walks - Yes we love going and we have a lake we can walk around and we see wildlife and it's beautiful so we would say the moment you stop. and retire, make exercise a priority - we would max out any tax-free savings plan that was available to us, in Canada we have the TFSA and we would max it out as soon as we retired or before we retired, whichever country you were in find.

If you have a tax-free savings plan, we would max it out in retirement. We would also open a brokerage account so we can trade stocks and shares and ETFs. We've bought some really interesting stocks, haven't we? We have made a lot of money with - We have been doing stocks for about 13 years and over that period they have tripled, plus we were buying stocks with dividends, so we have also benefited from the dividends - Yes, that is the strange case where We've also sold it and then wished we hadn't because it went up. You always buy a dog once in a while, not as a stock, but what the heck would we cut back on if we had cell phones?

We would reduce our cell phone. phone plans we would reduce them to a smaller data size, maybe lower it to $30 or $35 a month because since we are retired, spend more time at home, always spend time in environments that have wifi so you can use the wifi. instead of your data on your phone, so you may benefit from reducing your cell phone plan. I guess the other thing we've discovered recently, but now, if we did, one of our best

tips

is to change the Internet, you don't. You need 1 gigabyte all the major internet companies tell you that you need to go from 1 gigabyte to 150 Mbps because we did it and we are saving $70 to $80 dollars a month and we don't notice any difference in streaming movies that we can upload.

YouTube that we can download. we can see it all, but there is this mental thing that everyone says you need the fastest, so don't cut your costs, go for the 150Mbps and you will save a lot of money. Cut the cord, get rid of that cable and stream, so stream Netflix or Amazon Prime or any of the other streaming services that suit your tastes. Don't forget this is something stupid from the 70s. Rabbit ears or an antenna outside. There are over-the-air television signals that you can get for free. We don't need cable we have Amazon Prime and we have Netflix and we have rabbit ears and among all of those we don't miss having cable TV at all but we enjoy having all that money that we sent to the cable company hey Tina - We do the other thing more, hey Norm , it's just that with Amazon Prime we get all free deliveries - all included - And in 2 days - And with this pandemic we are ordering like crazy from Amazon - so yeah, that helps and saves - We Just ordered again today - Yeah oh , this is interesting and when we fell into a trap six years ago, you have to order more aggressively, we thought we needed to bring things in, right?

We think we got rid of everything we gave. We sold it to charity shops and got rid of it. We didn't do it aggressively enough, that was a mistake we made. If you think you're going to need some weird stuff in the future, you won't. get rid of stuff - We still have bags full of stuff, right? And I guess the thing is, if you haven't opened them in the time we've been here, we don't really need them, so we shouldn't. We brought it, so it's a work in progress, but our advice is don't bring it, you Get rid of it, you don't need it, right?

No, you don't need it. We would keep 50% of our capital in cash and we would keep 50% in stocks or ETFs, whatever you want to reduce risk. We don't want to invest completely in stocks because it's too risky and we're starting to get old and don't have the number of years to do it. wait for the stock market to come back, so we are happy to have 50% equity and we are happy to have 50% equity, it opens up opportunities for us by having access to capital and we can get the benefit of some of these banks in online they pay about 2 percent, 1.5 to 2 percent interest, so it's not as bad as a traditional bank.

I think one of the other things we would highly recommend, even though it's sometimes difficult, is to eat less and reduce your One thing we've learned is instead of having a really big plate, get the smallest plate, like the size of lunch, and make it the plate you eat off of so you eat less because, believe it or not, your overall activity declines in retirement. and yes, we recommend an hour a day, but in general, you won't leave your house, you won't go to work, you know? Think about it, you won't jump out of bed at 6 o'clock in the morning get in the shower grab your clothes have breakfast run to the bus run to the car drive for an hour to work and climb the stairs to your office you're at home and you make a mistake , you're only about 20 feet away from the refrigerator - Yeah, and if you're sitting on the couch watching TV or YouTube and whatever else, you're generally going to eat more - Your metabolic rate is going to go down, so eat less in retirement - and Don't gain the weight you want. maintain your mobility, which is the number one key in retirement.

Yeah, so you don't need replacement knees, hips and things like that. So Tina, how about starting a side job? Oh, Norm, I think it's a great idea, starting a YouTube channel documenting what you're doing, whether you're

retiring

. If you have any interest, you can put it on YouTube, but it doesn't have to be YouTube, it can be any side hustle, but it's one of the things you do. What you want to do when you retire is keep your brain active, you have to exercise it the same way you exercise your body and for us YouTube was Tina's suggestion that we do this and it has been great for both of us because it gives us something to talk about.

About to plan, it makes us interested in thinking about topics and we love reading all the comments. We love the comments, yes, and we have people from all over the world, right? It's just been a blessing to us. Yes. and especially even more, I would say we have been staying at home for the last 18 months - To be honest, it has helped us stay sane - It has really helped us - Here we are producing boring videos for you - From our dining table from our new YouTube studio, but it's cool, right? It is fun. Norm.

It really is. And we love it, so it's just an idea you can do. There are many more ideas you can do. So we just wanted to In summary, it was 6 years of the road to retirement and what we would do today if we retired today. Yes, we have learned a lot. Thank you very much for watching, we appreciate it. And we hope you enjoyed it. Find some of our

tips

useful - Stay safe - Yes, stay well until next time - Thanks for watching, bye, bye