Got our taxes filed for another year. Here in Canada we have to report income and "file our taxes," so the Government of Canada can make sure you have paid enough taxes for the prior year. The deadline is April 30th.
2025 was hubby's first full year of retirement, so it was going to be a "first" for us filing our taxes with only income from pensions and RRSP's. When you first retire that first year is a bit of a guessing game as to whether what you have planned and what actually happens aligns.
I am pleased to say it did align, sort of. The good news we didn't owe tax, but budget wise we did go slightly over budget with our expenses. Luckily we do have a cushion, so it wasn't the end of the world, plus we did pay for a couple of unexpected things.
What this means for 2026, is that we don't need to change how we do things. I will say I feel as though we are better off since we retired, and as yet I can't pin point how? Which I know is odd.
I will say I am fortunate that hubby was such a hard worker and I was a preplanner. This has made retirement financially easier on us. Though what is happening in the States is not making things easy up here, as every time a certain person opens his mouth we end up losing money 😡
So my advice for anyone thinking about retiring, plan well ahead if you want to retire. Research, research and research. Get rid of any debt before you retire, going into retirement not owing anything but your regular bills, is a god send in my opinion.
If you have any tips you want to share I would love that.
7 comments:
I think you feel better off because your not spending all that money coming and going to work every day. That is a huge piece of the budget.
Plus sitting at home living the simple life is much cheaper simply because your not out and about spending money on things you really don’t need. But buy because you see it. If that makes sense
Lol I know what you mean about x opening his mouth. Things are up and down like a yo-yo depending on what it says. Sigh.
Glad the taxes are done. It's certainly a relief
Wise words. We retired in 2018 and are still managing a good lifestyle through thoughtful planning and saving. Some of the bills are getting bigger year on year for council tax, utilities and car maintenance and the savings interest is quite poor so doesn't keep up with inflation. It makes it harder to keep up and everytime the orange person opens his mouth, like you say, we all suffer for it.
It's always such a huge relief when the taxes are done. We always get some money back but it's still stressful. We did ours with H&R Block and have our $ in our bank account already.
As for retirement - I remember reading all the doom-sayers claiming that in order to retire you need to have upwards of a million dollars in savings in order to survive. Funny thing, we've managed with absolutely nowhere near that amount. Mind you, we don't travel (other than to go to BC every couple years to visit our family) and we don't smoke or drink and we stretch our food as much as we can.
We're all paying for the orange one's tantrums.
"Got our taxes filed for another year" ... well done :)
All the best Jan
We haven't had any forms come in now for about a week. So I figure that right after Easter we will take our taxes in to the accountant, and keep our fingers crossed that there are no really big surprises.
God bless.
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