Filing Taxes

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.

Retirement one year later...........money

(I AM NOT A FINANCIAL EXPERT, PLEASE SEEK ADVISE OF A PROFESSIONAL, THIS IS WHAT HAS WORKED FOR US)

First up money.  

This is the major issue when retiring.  Will you or won't you have enough to live on; especially when you have no idea how long you are going to live.  Financial planners now use the age of 90 as your expected life expectancy.

You've worked all your life and have had a regular income.  Now you're relying on government pensions (if you're lucky) and what ever savings or private pensions you have been paying into.

We/I have been planning hubby's retirement for years.  I haven't worked in years, so we knew 95% of money in retirement was going to be coming in via hubby's income rather than mine.  We were okay with this.....obviously we discussed it prior and this is what worked for us.

One thing we did and anyone can do this, whether they are ten years away from retiring or just one year.  Write down your monthly outgoing's/bills, so you can work out how much you need to cover everything to survive.  I did it all on an Excel spreadsheet, but writing it down in a notebook will work as well.  This is a good habit to get into, and I still do it, just to see where we are each month.

Our spreadsheet, includes all utilities, car/house/life insurances, credit card bills, house/property taxes. Make sure you include cash you take out of the bank each week; with that I multiplied 52 weeks worth of cash divided by 12 to make the monthly amount.  If you have rent/mortgage/car loans etc. include those.  Anything you pay out each month.  Some things like our water/sewage bill comes in bi-monthly don't forget those types of bills.

This helped out a great deal with working things out.

What also helped us was getting forecast's from the government and any private pension companies showing us what we should expect in payments from them when retired.  Both the Canadian and the UK government did this for us no problem.

We have tax free savings accounts here in Canada, use them!!!  They come in handy.  Until you start getting regular payments you may have to dip into your savings accounts to supplement your pensions.

When applying for pensions do it at least six months ahead of time.  Our local library had free sessions with the people from the government pension department.  They were super helpful; as all the forms you have to fill in can be quite complicated; especially if you were born in a different country!  We found the most complicated forms to complete were for the Old Age Security, which is not a huge amount each year.  We were thinking we would have to give them our first born child with the amount of questions they asked!!

Oh and one country talks to another country, so in our case the Canadian government does know where you are receiving other pensions from....LOL  Everyone will take their piece of the pie!

If you were born in another country, you need a lot of info from your birth country, including your citizenship and immigration papers.  Thankfully we were organized and had kept everything from when we lived in the UK and when we moved to Canada.  We also told our kids what they needed and gave them their paperwork, and kept photo copies ourself, as they are 25 years away from retiring.

It did take us a few months to get used to receiving money at different times of the month and we did have one or two glitches along the way.  We receive a monthly amount once per month from a RRIF.  The first month we were to receive it, they forgot to put it through 😠Luckily I had moved money into our savings account as a plan B just in case something like this happened.  The bank and our financial advisor apologized but it was an inconvenience.  (LESSON HERE, HAVE A BACK UP PLAN!)

All our Canadian income/pensions, have between 20 to 30% tax taken off at source, so we do not get dinged with a big tax bill at the end of the year.  All foreign income comes in without tax taken off at source.  We won't know until March 2026 to see if all our calculations were correct when we file our taxes.

Hubby stopped receiving a pay cheque from his employer at the end of 2024.  So technically we have been receiving just pensions since the beginning of 2025.  So far so good, we have managed just fine.  Everyone said we wouldn't need as much money.  I can't say for sure that's the case, but I am guessing the more we slow down and do not do as much that will be true.

We have a window of probably 10 years where we will be fit enough to travel.  So we know that money will be flowing a bit more during the next ten years.    Do we have enough to live off until we are 90; as per the financial advisor and our accountant son, yes we do; but who knows?

If anyone else has any tips or hints for retiring and managing money  please add yours in the comments.

September 26th, 2024

That was the last day that Hubby went into work.  In fact he only worked half a day and then left.  He left without fanfare; despite being asked numerous times would he like a leaving "do."  However that's not hubby's way.  He just wanted to get the heck out of there.  It was a Thursday and we left to go on vacation to Savannah on the Saturday.  He was super stressed about leaving, as for the last 50 years that's all he has known going to work every day.

He was old school when it came to work.  You turned up for work 20 to 30 minutes before your starting time.  You took pride in your work and you constantly learned more about your job/trade.  Also you respected your elders!!!  

Lets just say things have changed a lot over the years and hubby was ready to leave by the time he left.

We were lucky, and I use that word loosely as between the end of September until the end of the year, we had a lot going on.  We went to Savannah, then we had a death in the family, so had to go to the UK for the funeral.  By the time we got back from there it was the beginning of December.  Then there was Christmas, so all in all, we didn't have time to breathe for the rest of 2024.

I told everyone our goal was to still be married by the time Spring hit; as that was when hubby would be bored stiff and probably getting on my nerves 😏  We ended up having a super snowy winter and he spent half his life snow blowing.

Spring came around and he had a couple of projects in the garden to keep him busy.  Then he started doing some work in the laundry room.  Then golf season started and he joined an over 55 golf league and goes to that every Monday morning.  The season is now over with, but he will be joining again next year.

So here we are a year later,  If you were to ask hubby would he like to work; even part time, he would say no.  He has settled into retirement surprisingly well.  He does have to keep busy though and does get bored easily.  However he loves sports, so we buy him a subscription to Fubo every year for his birthday; so he can watch his beloved British football/soccer.

He keeps busy with the garden and diy.  Then our goal is to travel more.  That hasn't really happened this year, but I'm hoping we get a couple of bigger trips in next year.

So, so far, so good.  We're still married......which is a bonus!!!  Are there days where I could cheerfully strangle him and not have any remorse........of course, and I bet he feels the same some days, but overall things are good.  I know I would be lost without him being around.

Look for a follow up post on the things we should or should not have done when it comes to retirement.

If you retired recently how is it for you?

Another stage in life..........

We're entering another stage in our lives.  To be honest, we have been preparing for this for a number of years, but now we're on the final countdown to hubby retiring.

In fact we are around 325 days until his last day of work, give or take a week or two either side of the September 2024 expected retirement day.  The leaving date is not fixed in stone yet, and won't be until probably next April/May.  There are a number of factors in play with this, and it's mainly to do with banked hours and vacation pay.  

One of hubby's co-workers retired last year in October and got paid through to the end of the year, as he had banked hours and vacation pay owing.  Both hubby and I think this is a good idea, and we may as well get health benefits until the end of the year.  

That is something we have to look into, as I won't be 65 for another four years after hubby retires so I will have to pay for all medications out of our own pocket.  Hubby's will be covered; less $100 yearly payment, by the Government.

Looking at the graphic above, I feel we are the people not pictured there, there should be another person, between the far right one and the second to the far right.

One thing I think we all probably think about is how much time do we have left on this earth?  When doing a financial plan they plan it with an expected life expectancy of 90.  So I guess we are two thirds through our life expectancy.

Bit of an odd post, but something I was thinking about today.

Regarding, hubby's false tooth having a hole in it, we have no idea how it happened.  It cost hubby $250 though to have it replaced as he has used the $2,000 we can spend on dentists this year through our insurance.  Never have we ever used all the money allocated in a year for a dentist in all the years we have been in Canada.  Also, the dentist waived his fee.  The price at dentists has shot through the roof.  I hope that one day, the government will cover dental visits for seniors.

A bit of this and that

(photo credit)

We finally had a quiet weekend.  Saturday the weather was glorious, so we spent time in the garage, shed and garden doing some tidying up.  We cut the grass and although it looks lovely and green the lawn is full of weeds.  We have been going back and forward as to whether or not we'll use a lawn service again to do the weeding and feeding of our lawn.  However after working out what it would cost us to do it ourselves, we would not be saving any money.  We have around 4,500 sq ft of lawn, so we need quite a bit of product.  It's the weed killer that costs the most amount.  So I will be calling them in the next week or two to book their service for 2022.  Calling before the end of the month will give us a 10% discount which is better than nothing I guess?

We are planning on putting things away for the season next weekend as it's Thanksgiving weekend.  We don't normally do much of anything with the family.  Hubby will be helping our son close his pool for the season one day and we'll do our things around the house the other two days.

Sunday as it was raining on and off all day was spent in the house.  I am working on a project for the grand's for Christmas.  I will share with you when I get the first one finished.  It was nice not having to do too much after having such a busy three weeks.

Hubby is back to work today so it will be a bit strange not having him around the house.  He has decided to work until he is 65 so only another two years to go.  We are lucky though that if he decides he has had enough he can leave work when ever he wants.  We have been working on putting all our "ducks in a row," ready for retirement for a while now.  He just doesn't want to leave his work just yet.

Hope you all have a great week😊  Are all your ducks in a row?

In with 2020.......

Guess that says it all, and onwards we march into the 2020's.  Not sure about you, but I remember all the hype about going from 1999 into 2000.  Everything was going to crash and nothing would work.......but 2000 arrived and everything was fine.  I hope going into the 2020's it will be the same.

We will all be a little older, but with age I hope comes wisdom, so hopefully we're all a little wiser.

Our plans for this year are all still a little sketchy, but do have a couple of things we want to achieve.

House: finish renovating the downstairs bathroom.................that was only supposed to be a titivate the downstairs bathroom job, that has spiraled out of control...........more on that when it is all finished.

Titivate the upstairs bathroom.............HOWEVER...........after our experience with the downstairs bathroom I am truly afraid it will turn out to be a bigger job than we initially thought.  Also unlike the downstairs bathroom, I can't won't have it in an uproar for weeks on end........so hubby may have to take a week off to get the job done faster.

We will probably do other things around the house, but nothing planned yet.

Health: I must exercise more and lose weight to try and get me off these diabetes pills.  They are killing my stomach and I am not happy with them AT ALL!!  So it's all up to me to get off them......if I don't do the work it's my own fault.

Appleby Lane: I need to promote it more.  Make it's presence known on social media.  I also like the idea of podcasts, so may take a course in February at our local library.  I need to come up with new ideas and focus on what I like to do more, rather than what other people want me to do.  Which I guess is say no more often....LOL

Hubby is now working until he is 65, so four more years, so need to keep saving for his retirement.  I still use my savings pots for Christmas, Birthday's and my other pot.  Just used money out of the other pot towards buying a new vanity for the downstairs bathroom.  

Grocery shopping and menu planning..............grocery prices have just shot up I need to keep more of an eye on that and will do a blog post on that soon.  Menu planning has always been a weak point for me, but will will try and work on that this year as well.

Vacation..........not sure where or when we will be going away this year.  It will probably be in September (like always) but not sure where.......if anyone has any suggestions, we like to rent a cabin/cottage so we have kitchen facilities and have somewhere comfy to sit at night if that helps, we are open to suggestions?

One other thing I MUST MAKE AN EFFORT TO LEAVE COMMENTS ON OTHER PEOPLE'S BLOGS!!  I read blogs but hardly comment, I must remedy that this year!!

Happy New Year everyone!