I'm heavily invested in Freedom95, sometime in 2055 I'll see some easy livin'.

...forgot to mention I'm 48 today

My plan involves somehow finding a secret pirate treasure buried in my backyard. It could happen. I'm getting a good vibe about this.

What is this retirement thing you talk about?

Human nature makes it very tough for you to do this.

Pick a stock in items that people need through thick and thin like toothpaste or tissue.

Pick good long term management.

Buy low and enjoy steady dividends even when the market dives.

At the lowest ebbs, resist getting out and buy more blue chip.

At the peaks, resist taking profits.

That*s what Buffet and Soros do, but they are made of steel.= TG

I used to laugh about having my retirement years when I was in my twenties, early thirties; played in bands, travelled a little, worked a few years now and then.
Now I will be workng unto death. Funny thing, I've talked to a few folks in the same life plan and we all pretty much feel it was worth it. We had our "golden years" when we had great health, didn't get hangovers and had lotsa hormones.

My plan is simple, hold on to all my beer cans. By the time I can retire they my be worth $0.25 each, now since I paid $0.10 deposit that'l be a $0.15 profit, per unit...
Drink up

I'm on the Freedom Six Feet Under plan myself.

Seriously, the best retirement plan is to find an employer with a defined benefit plan (rare these days) when you're young and then stick with them for the rest of your working life.

Difficult to do, but if you can do it you'll be OK.

If there was only a way I could have hedged against my first wife having an affair, having a baby with the man, and then divorcing me and taking all of my wealth(well, 2 houses, a cottage. and most of my money).

I guess there is no way to hedge against a lesbian, man-hating family court judge.

Any obe that blank on aging and working hard physical jobs for 40 or more years, shouldn't be allowed near a retirement fund.

"Captain Capitalism my ass...more like captain cannibis with his surreal concept of the working class.

Kinda of a doomsdayist. Saving and investing has worked for me.

Diversified portfolio, including real estate and Freedom 55 is up & running. Regular saving (RRSP) program with tax savings to pay down mortgages.

But I still work because it keeps the boredom away from my drinking hand.

Anyone moving to Vancouver - I have one brand new condo assignment left for sale.

I've often wondered what is going to happen when that greedy generation retires and starts pulling their money out of the market. I just seems that there will continue to be people that use 401k/IRA/RRSP savings plans for their retirement well into the future, so if the market is inflated it may continue to be inflated for that reason.

On the other hand, I haven't ruled out working as a door greeter at Wal-mart in my grey haired years.

Several years ago when the stock market was enduring a big sell off the President came to the rescue by setting up the little known "Plunge Protection Team". The job of the PPT is to support American stock markets during times of uncertainty. Thus some days when news is bad and stocks are expected to fall and the opposite happens we know the PPT is hard at work.

With the collapse of the housing market it's now more imperative than ever that the stock market NOT be allowed to suffer a huge sell off. Bottom line is stock markets are now manipulated by government and statistics are manipulated by government to support the stock market. For example the lie that inflation is running at only 2 or 3 percent is perpetuated to support the market and keep the sheeple from stampeding. Another government trick is to depress the price of gold because a rising POG indicates all is not well and good in the kingdom.

Met one fellow who reached manditory senility and was shuffled out the door. Being bored he took up delivering pizzas. Says he is making more money now than his last years on the job. I don't know if he claims his tips for income tax purposes.

Retirement. Isn't that where you retire into a hole in the ground and they throw dirt on you?

Today's concept of 'retirement' (stop working at 60-65, then play golf and spend the winter in Arizona) is a recent thing, dating from the late 19th century in Europe, and from the Great Depression in N. America. In both cases it was created to free up jobs for family heads.

That type of retirement will go the way of the dodo with the next big financial upheaval, which is due anytime now. History has a way of repeating itself.

Good information and advice from the captain....
I agree completely and in fact have and continue to take steps in that area.

While I have great respect for Captain Capitalism, I think that he's wrong on this one, on two counts:

1. "Securities" does not mean stocks only. It also includes bonds, which offer a fixed, lower-risk, although not guaranteed, return.

2. Every retirement plan that I've ever seen offers bond funds and at least one money-market fund as investment options.

The stock market may be a "bubble" right now. I don't know, and I really don't think anybody else knows. If you believe that it is, however, putting money into bonds, directly or through one or more bond funds, or into cash equivalents (treasury bills or money market funds) is probably a good idea.

Silicon Valley Jim, Certified Financial Planner®

The S&P is at or lower than historical P/E levels.

The Dow is lower at 13x forward.

That was before the market decline...

Scratch that last. I can't read.

Silicone Valley Jim,

Pardon me. You suggest a shift into bonds at these suppressed interest rates?

You suggest, fear of the Bear and run to bonds and on the first sign of an uptick, you will suggest back into equity.

Logical for you, the commission trader, but disaster for long term equity builders. Why should one switch out of steady dividends, regardless of the share value to buy bonds that lose out to inflation?

Traders, they are all the same. = TG

kingstonlad. i feel for you. i started over after similar circumstances, just no baby. it's tough but not impossible to get finances back on track. although i have much less now that i am retired, than i would have had.

I spent most of my money on beer and women. The rest I just wasted ... :>)

I'm in the buy high quality blue chip dividend stocks camp. That's all I've bought in the last five years and my money has more than doubled. Like above poster said, buy stuff that is recession proof, has great management, free cash flow, and can mess up and still survive. Think of Coca Cola and the "New Coke" which turned out to be disaster. Coca Cola is doing just fine.

Now think of Nortel, made stupid mistakes (moved out of voice into saturated broadband, purchased poor quality companies with their stock, and then did bond issue, thus diluting their stock). That stock ain't coming back and the company could very likely break up. They also have poor management - I wouldn't touch it. Didn't buy into oil boom either, because, generally speaking, resource and oil companies are not great long term businesses.

Trying to time markets is foolhardy. Smart investors buy near the bottom and sell near the top; trying to squeeze out that last 5% profit is what can get you in a pickle real quick. As the Fidelity commercial says, you have to be smart about it, though. So, as you near time to start withdrawing, consider taking profits and converting them to low/no volatility investments.

Selling stocks in a down market to derive income is the opposite of dollar cost averaging, and can cause serious capital encroachment and more and more shares have to be sold to derive a selected income.

Buttress dividend stocks with high quality real estate. Be careful using bonds, especially expensive bond funds.

Even if you decide to diversify further (just don't deworsify), always look for quality. Price alone is a poor determinant of value. Just ask those Nortel shareholders who thought $70 a share was a bargain, since it had gone down from $120.

Always consider the tax impact, and fees, in any transaction. Have a balance between RRSPs and open investments. Use RRSPs for ongoing income and capital gains investments for large ticket items, like buying cars, helpling kids and travel.

Just my thoughts. Keep it simple, don't listen to the pundits/experts. They're doom and gloom types who want you to keep listening to their programs and buying their newsletters. The MSM knows as much about finance and economics as they do about politics, with the bias in.

The Captain is right to look at demographics, but they are only right 2/3 of time; and, boomers won't sell off their portfolios right away, and many of them will be working full or part time for many years past 65, because they want to and/or they have to.

I think the rule of S&P 500 is not P/E over 15 but:
Rule of 20 - S&P 500
Inflation + Price/Forward earnings.
Above 20 - market overpriced
Below 20 - market underpriced.
At current inflation of just over 2% a P/E of less than 17.5% would signal a buy.

I'm pretty sure that "financial securities" means a lot more than stocks -- including government treasury bills, Canada Savings Bonds, perhaps money-market funds, etc.

In other words, very safe, and non-market-inflating investments.

I have bounced back quite nicely. I gave up the assets with little fight. I knew with hard work I could always go and make more money.

It would have been nice to get a fair shake, though!

Shamrock,

I wish we could bill liberals for your sound advice. Maybe they will contribute to the SDA fund when they do well holding good blocks long term. = TG

Pardon me. You suggest a shift into bonds at these suppressed interest rates?

No. I suggested that, if an investor thought that stocks were over priced, he should shift into bonds or cash, not bonds alone.

You suggest, fear of the Bear and run to bonds and on the first sign of an uptick, you will suggest back into equity.

First, you don't know what I would suggest because you can't read minds. Second, any suggestion that I made was conditional on an investor's belief that the stock market was over-priced. I never said that the stock market was over-priced. Third, and corollary to the second, my recommendation to actual clients is always to diversify and hold, while rebalancing annually.

Logical for you, the commission trader

I am not a commission trader. I am an employee of a fee-only financial planning firm.

Mississauga Matt: "Seriously, the best retirement plan is to find an employer with a defined benefit plan (rare these days) when you're young and then stick with them for the rest of your working life."

Sadly, not so for the retirees of Bethlehem steel, United Airlines, Delphi and a raft of others. Retirees ended up with a fraction of their expected benefits after bankruptcy. GM and Ford walk that same path, I fear. Currently, only about 20 percent of private sector workers participate in defined benefit pensions (from nearly half thirty years ago), and that number will likely drop to the vanishing point over the next ten years or so.

Part of my retirement plan is being run by the California Lottery Commission.

I like Shamrock's ideas. If you're just starting out (or close to it), know that in the long term, the market is always up. That's not just whistling in the dark. But it does mean that you have to be able to ride through times like the 2000 bear market.

Then there's the question, "what else is there?" Social Security? Any competent (i.e., honest) financial advisor will tell you that SS is not going to be - and was never intended to be - your sole source of income during retirement. With SS sceduled to go broke sometime in the next few decades, we need to find something else. (No government is likely to let SS go bust, and their only choices are to raise taxes on the rest of us, or to keep raising the retirement age (it was originally set at the typical life expectancy age), or cut out all the social-welfare add-ons that have crept in through the years (which is so logical they'll never do it).

Other than equities (stocks, bonds, banks) there's real estate - but that usually comes with a big entry fee, and if you're going to be a landlord, a lot of time and effort (which is fine, if that's going to be your main occupation). There's Investing in Rare Stuff, but in that field, the sellers are the ones who make out. (For example, DeBeers' famous "diamonds are forever" - in other words, you buy them, but don't ever think you're going to be able to sell them at a profit.)

The Big Question, then, is, "OK, what else?". Even if you (by which I mean we) intend to die with our screens on, what do we do against the time we come back from the doctor's office with a diagnosis of Cystic Prognosis of the Hooziewhatsis, which involves $2000/month pills and/or $5000/month long-term nursing care?

I think things started to slip in the mid 80s in the USA and likely here in Canaduh when the value of real estate exceeded the value put on the industrial base. Im doing this from memory , I havent been able to find a link to it, but I distinctly remember hearing about it around 1985 when there were some corrections happening in the housing market and it made sense, then thing went awry again as soon as renovating and nesting became a fad.

If you're looking for 20% interst on your money you just have to look in the right places like New York Port Authority. 20% today versus 4.3% last week. Of course no guarantee you'll get your capital back.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aVE0T47ZqK5c&refer=home

Hey, we voted for the wrong Party, Flaherty ruined our Income Trusts something Rrruffflphy Goodale wouldn't EVER do. Scut Brison will verify that.

All those poor little old Ladies and gents who invested are now going to starve.
It was a story for a while, why has it died down?
Is the answer obvious?

Toss your Canadian citizenship and declare 'refugee' status,( dosen't it seem passing strange to you- that someone who sneaks into this country and collects welfare, is better off, than someone who has worked and paid taxes here for the past 40 years!?!)

I’m retiring soon, can’t decide whether to go with Michelins or Goodyear.

Jim,
just my amateur opinion. No offense intended and none taken. Challenge is sure invigorating though, isn*t it? = TG

Bernie,

Go with Kal Tire, then if Michelin or Goodyear suffers a Firestone, you don*t feel it. = TG