# Today my first day of retirement - Advice needed (Part 3)



## jman123 (Jan 28, 2015)

Greetings,

As a recap , when I last posted in Part 2 of my saga in retirement, my financial advisor suggested I put all of my monies into one fund, the Fidelity Global Balanced Portfolio portfolio. I sent him an e-mail saying that I would be willing to go up to 50% with that but that I was looking at having some "reliable" income in our accounts to cover possible downturns in the stock market. This reliable income would be from stocks/mutual funds that produced some dividend income. 
Anyways, he was just starting a vacation when I emailed him and he should get back to me this week with a new plan.

In any case, I do have under my complete control a RRSP account worth approximately $202K and a LIRA worth about $36K. 

Since my advisor handles about $800K of our RRSPS and LIRAs and if converted to RRIF/LIFs (and along with QPP and OAS) will generate probably more yearly income that I need I am tempted to convert the accounts under my complete control to a RRIF and a LIF. I figured anything extra would go into our TFSAs and hopefully move the needle a bit converting us to "responsible" spenders. You know, have a little fun, in our so called golden years. 

So, in trying to educate myself, through this forum, MoneySense and some fellow old timers I am still not 100% sure of my path. That is, go the Couch Potato or the dividend path (which a couple of my friends have advised me to pursue)

Here is a break down of what I have in my personal RRSP and LIRA accounts (rounded up or down to the nearest 1000)

RRSP 

Company stock = $95K <-- moved recently from another account which I had while I was working and which the company contributed 
ENB = 1K <-- probably bought on some dividend buying suggestion
ZAG = 26K
XAW = 45K
VCN = 19K
Cash = 15K <-- converted to cash and transferred recently from another account which I had while I was working and was contributing for awhile,etc...

Discounting the company stock and the cash,which are new, I was aiming for a 70/30 split with XAW (All minus Canada) being 50%, VCN (Canada) being 20% and ZAG (bond) being 30%.

LIRA

ZAG - 9K
XAW - 9K
XUU - 9K
VCN - 8K

Here I was going for a 25% split between Canadian,US, International equity ETFs and a bond equity so a 75/25 split. 
I may transfer this account to my financial advisor to combine it with what I have him since it is a bit small. Not sure on that.

Anyway, so now that I am in retirement mode (I only miss 1 thing from work, that being the regular pay check ) I will be going the 60/40 split route. 

So, I am thinking, at least for the RRSP way, I can do the following:

Convert to RRIF and immediately take out 3.85% of it value from the cash there. My wife is 64 years old , one year younger than me so I can use her age for the RRIF withdrawal rate. 

Sell all of my companies stock (although it has been doing well) and with any money left from the 3.85% withdrawal (approximately $7,700), take what I have in consideration and end up at the end with 20% each with XAW,XUU and VCN for 60% equity and then for the 40% split for bond/FI . For that 40% (which would be approximately 80K) half would be ZAG and the other half in a GIC ladder. The GIC ladder is not very appealing since it would be in the 2.5% interest rate. I can use this same approach with the LIRA but no splitting for the FI part. 

OR 

Go the dividend stock approach which I have played with in the TFSA. I have the following already: 

Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS)
CIBC	(CM)
Genworth MI Canada (MIC)
Great-West Lifeco (GWO)

These I got from the MoneySense websiite (https://www.moneysense.ca/save/investing/stocks/top-100-dividend-stocks-of-2019/). I can go through their list as well as a list I got from https://www.dividendgrowthinvestingandretirement.com/canadian-dividend-all-star-list/ and other things I found on the Internet to come up with a list of companies to buy. I guess one of my retirement hobbies would be having to determine how much to buy from each. 

I guess I would use this for the 60% equity part and use the same approach for couch potato plan for the 40% FI part.

Not sure which way to go. 

Advice please.


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## redsgomarching (Mar 6, 2016)

Question, are the funds that you have with the advisor non-reg? If you are going to put it in an ETF there is honestly no point in paying him the management fee to put it in an ETF that you can buy.


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## jman123 (Jan 28, 2015)

redsgomarching said:


> Question, are the funds that you have with the advisor non-reg? If you are going to put it in an ETF there is honestly no point in paying him the management fee to put it in an ETF that you can buy.


All the monies I have with my advisor is registered (RRSPs and LIRA). 

My question is regarding what I directly control. 

I am thinking now of just going the Coach Potato approach with 20% Canadian, 20% USA, 20% International and the remaining 40% split equally between a Bond fund and a 5 year GIC ladder. All ETFs. That is for my more larger account. 

I am thinking of using the dividend stock approach with my LIRA account with the 60% in dividend paying stocks and the remaining 40% as the Coach Potato FI portion

Leave for a bit and see how they compare.


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