Financial Planning For Retirement with Fred Vettese

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Getting to Know Fred Vettese

Fred Vettese is the former chief actuary of Morneau Shepell (which became Lifeworks and is now part of Telus Health). In recent years, his focus has been on helping individual Canadians prepare for retirement, especially those without DB pension plans. He has written hundreds of articles for the Globe and Mail and National Post as well as four books on retirement planning.In particular, Fred is the author of the best-selling book, Retirement Income for Life.The third edition was released in January 2024. He also developed a retirement income calculator known as PERC that is based on the ideas described in Retirement Income for Life. In late 2022, Fred also took on the role of producing a weekly retirement chart for the Globe and Mail.

Questions Asked:

3:00 Short term inflation is something we can get used to but long term inflation can wreck our retirement plans!  Was it was inflation that made you revise your book?

7:10 Can you talk about decumulation?

8:40 The idea of accumulation is fairly straight forward. But decumulation is a lot harder. There are so many things to consider but there aren’t as many financial advisors willing to help someone decumulate.

11:10 What are the reasons why people don’t want to defer their CPP? 

14:35 You also talk about things that you should do before you retire. 

18:10 In the book, you talk about a fictional couple Nick and Susan. 

20:15 In you’re book, you’re being more realistic. That you don’t need 1.5M in assets to retire.

21:49 You give the description of retirement spending as a “Smile”. You’re not a big fan of the 4% rule.

23:30 In Part 2 of your book, you talk about 5 enhancements to aid Nick and Susan’s in retirement. Can you tell us what those are?

29:00 Can you define the word “tontine”?

32:19 Did the Trudeau government enrich OAS for people over 75?

34:56 The fifth and last enhancement that you talk about is “Have a backstop.”