When you think of retirement and everything you need to do to prepare for it, I suspect you might think that some of your success hinges on getting the answers to these questions right:

When should I apply for Canada Pension Plan benefits to get the most out of them?

Should I think about deferring Old Age Security? Am I at risk of having it clawed back?

When should I convert my RRSP to an RRIF and when should I withdraw from it? How does that even work?

Should I take the lifetime benefit from my pension plan, or should I take the commuted value and manage it myself?

Will buying an annuity make sense for me, and – if so – when do I buy one and with what pot of money?

First, let me assure you: there are no right answers; there are only right answers for your situation, values, and constraints. A successful retirement for you is different from a successful retirement for me. All we may have in common is that we both want to be safe and happy, without having to worry about money every day.

Second, you will have to make decisions about what to do with your pension or how to withdraw from your portfolio or when to apply for CPP and OAS benefits, even if your “decision” is to take the default option offered.

Finally, no one is grading how successful you are at making these decisions. The consequences – both good and bad – play out in slow motion, over decades. You are the only judge.

So what does all this mean for you, knowing you need to prepare for retirement, still holding the list of questions and wondering where to start? Start here:

Know Thyself

If you do only one thing to prepare for the day you stop earning income, this is it: you must get really, really familiar with what your life costs and hone the skills necessary to monitor and adjust those costs as your life changes.

This doesn’t mean you need a budget. It doesn’t mean you need a spreadsheet, or money in jars, or receipts in an envelope somewhere. At the heart of it all, this has very little to do with money at all, and everything to do with what “happy and safe” means for you and what you need to get and stay both. Of course you should have a system that gives you regular feedback on how this translates into dollars and cents and what the trends look like…but that comes after you do the hard work.

Why does this matter so much? It matters because you can’t make decisions that feel right about CPP or when you should convert your RRSP to a RRIF until you know why you’re making them. Is it to protect your spouse’s feelings of safety and happiness if you die first? To have enough and give away the rest? To spend your last dollar on your last day?

Mind the Gap

There’s a scene in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere where Richard Mayhew, having used the underground his whole adult life, ignores the loudspeaker announcement to mind the gap and has a close encounter with the monster that lives in it. From then on, he pays attention to the space between the tube train and the station platform.

Identifying your gap – the difference between your annual income from pensions, CPP, OAS, and how much your safe and happy life costs – is the other thing you should be spending time on to prepare for retirement. Bad things happen when you stop paying attention to the gap.

If most or all of what you need is going to be covered by guaranteed income that will pay you until you die, is protected at least somewhat from inflation, and might even keep paying your partner after you’re gone, congratulations! You’ve got a lot less to think about, and the consequences for deciding poorly on any given retirement choice will probably involve paying higher taxes than you should have, but is unlikely to change your day to day life.

If there’s an uncomfortably wide space between your annual income and how much your life costs, the consequences for deciding poorly on any of the above questions can permanently affect your safety and happiness. Even the healthiest investment portfolio can be chewed up by a poor sequence of market returns, taxes, and fees. A small nest egg plus a big gap means you may need to revisit what safe and happy means to you and make some difficult – even impossible – choices.

It shouldn’t be too hard to get a good enough sense of your gap to know what camp you fall into. Service Canada can estimate your Canada Pension Plan benefit (it won’t be exact, since they don’t know how much more you’ll contribute or if you’re eligible for any adjustments until you actually apply, but it will be close enough for this purpose), Old Age Security pays the same amount to everyone who meets the residency and net income tests, and you should have a pension statement from last year or access to a personalized online portal lying around somewhere.

Don’t even worry about taxes at this point. All you want to do is add up your income, subtract your expenses, and notice the difference. Are 30% of your expenses covered? 50%? 80%?

Now What?

Sharp readers will have noticed that none of the questions we started with have been answered yet, and frankly it’s because one more article on the internet about how most people should answer them isn’t going to answer those questions for you.

What I want you to walk away with is where to start. Consider this your guide to step zero of retirement preparation. Do not pass go until you’ve clarified what safe and happy means for you, and expect to circle the board and re-evaluate this many more times before you’re done with living. Do not make any decisions about pensions or portfolios until you have a rough idea of the gap you’re dealing with.

Every piece of information you need is out there for the asking at low or no cost: valuable resources like Retirement Income for Life by Fred Vettese, or Pensionize Your Nest Egg by Moshe Milevsky and Alexandra MacQueen are probably on the shelf at your local library right now, just waiting for you to take them home.

Answering your questions with a financial planner who knows her retirement onions might cost you a few thousand dollars. Reviewing your progress and making course corrections as life unfolds might cost you again every couple of years.

Take care of step zero first, because that will help you refine the questions you need to ask to make sure you enjoy a successful retirement. Then – and only then – do you go looking for answers.

Finally, summer is here! While I heartily encourage you to spend every possible minute outside (as I write this indoors because I’m tired of wiping pollen off my laptop screen), you may find yourself wishing for some great reads, and boy do I have some for you.

If you can only read three, I’ve picked them out for you below. If you have time for more, here’s one on the inequitable outcomes of school fundraising (it might ring some bells for parents looking forward to the end of school and the end of the neverending fundraisers), here’s one on how robo-advisors and fee for service financial planners can deliver superior value at lower cost to traditional “wealth management” offerings, here’s another reminder that bonds still (yes, still) belong in your portfolio, and there’s more fantastic stuff in the list below.

Read on!

Create Your Own Online Spend Tracker

From Owen Winkelmolen

This is a simple, elegant, and free system for tracking spending that you can set up, customize, and be using in less than half an hour. Yes, please.Read the full article here. [

To Be a New Fool in the World

From Jason Zweig

This is a total cheat, since it’s a list of posts, but when someone as smart and dedicated to continuously pursuing wisdom as Jason Zweig publishes a list of what he considers his best work, you read it.Read the full article here. 

You Are What You Read

From Josh Brown

Make damned sure your sources and curators come from different backgrounds than yours & each other’s. Diversify your world view, don’t de-worsify it by adding more of the same crowd. (That might include me & that’s okay.)

Read the full article here

You can read this month's entire list below:

Occam’s – Does Dollar Cost Averaging Make Sense? | Bob French

Investing a large lump sum: all at once, or in smaller amounts over time?

Break the Chain: Stop Being a Slave | Farnham Street

It can be hard to say no. It means refusing someone, and often it means denying yourself instant gratification. The rewards of doing this are uncertain and less tangible.

[great article; terrible title]

Safety Net Funds: Why Traditional Advice Is Wrong | Dan Egan

This is a really interesting compromise for emergency funds.

The Financial Literacy Hoax | Sandy Hudson & Nora Loreto

Financial literacy education, when divorced from the politics of the public pension and tax systems, essentially teaches that "if you're poor it's because you don't know rules, not because the system doesn't serve you."

How to rebalance when some ETFs already do it themselves | Dan Bortolotti

On rebalancing around the all-in-one Vanguard funds in a couch potato portfolio.

The Great Divide: Fundraising is no solution to under-resourced classrooms | Erika Shaker

If we want things like well-stocked libraries and well-resourced classrooms (and field trips and musical instruments and art supplies and team uniforms and sports equipment) for our kids, then we have to acknowledge that all kids deserve these things too. So let’s make sure we pay for them in the most efficient, effective, fairest way possible.

Do Bonds Still Diversify When Rates Rise? | Cullen Roche

And that’s why you own bonds – not for the sexy returns, but because they make your overall portfolio more behaviorally sustainable.

You might not know this, but I kiss a lot of frogs.

In my neck of the woods, it’s spring peeper season, which means that if you’re near a pond at dusk you’ll hear a chorus of tiny little frogs making some of the most beautiful music on earth. (Have a listen here.)

These aren’t the frogs I’m kissing.

Would you be surprised to hear that the single most common question I hear from clients isn’t should I pay myself a dividend or salary? or can I afford to retire? or where does all my money go?

Nope. It’s: can you recommend an insurance advisor/lawyer/accountant/investment counsellor?

Identifying where my professional expertise ends and connecting clients to colleagues I trust to do right by them is one of my core mandates. It only makes sense to find smart, engaged professionals who know more than I do in their own fields. It increases our collective intelligence, and lets us do more, better...provided they care about my clients’ well-being as much as I do.

And here’s where the frog kissing comes in…

Clients don’t ask me who to trust (which is what all professional recommendations boil right down to) because they don’t know how to Google “insurance advisor [my town].” They ask because discerning the difference between someone who will serve them and someone who will sell to them is hard to do.

I have spent a lot of time meeting with accountants, lawyers, insurance advisors, and investment counsellors, asking about core values, walking through process, and discussing the kinds of clients they feel best equipped to serve. Often, they turn out to be steady, reliable folks who keep their heads down and do the work. Sometimes they turn out to be toads (ugh).

Every once in a while (more often than you’d think, but less frequently than I’d like) I find royalty: professional colleagues who have incredibly high ethical standards, radical transparency, generosity with knowledge, and who care fiercely for their clients’ well-being.

These are the ones who make it all worthwhile, and who I recommend to clients. I still expect my clients to ask the hard questions even after an introduction, but helping them by providing a short list to start from is worth all the frog kissing.

On that note:If you know any professional royalty, I’d love to know them too. (Remember to practice good email introduction hygiene.)

Now that tax season is over, please forward copies of your 2017 tax returns and notices of assessment (or introduce me to your accountant so they can do it for you!)

Originally published in MoneySense on April 29, 2018

When robo-advisors first burst on the scene a few years ago, they threatened to replace human advisors in situations where not much human help was needed. If you wanted more extensive human advice, you still had to pay up to go with a conventional advisor.

Now there’s a formidable new trend emerging. Increasingly, robo-advisors are teaming up with human advisors in new and creative ways to provide “hybrid” combinations that achieve the best of both worlds.

You get easy digital access and efficiency combined with whatever level of human expertise you need. You can expect to pay less in fees compared to amounts charged by conventional advisors. But often you also get more value from the advice because it can be concentrated where you need it most.

“Hybrid is where the future is going and everyone is converging into it,” says Kendra Thompson, global lead for wealth management at consultancy firm Accenture. Of course, the trend is still in its early stages and you will only see hints of it in today’s robo-advisor offerings.

It’s easy to get the misleading impression that robo-advisors are antagonistic rivals to human advisors. Fueling that impression are hard-hitting ads by robo-advisor Questrade Portfolio IQ, where everyday Canadian investors grill their sleazy-looking conventional advisors about why their fees are so high and their returns are so low.

But it’s clear that algorithms won’t replace quality human advice in more complex or nuanced situations, at least any time soon. If you need a comprehensive financial plan or want help coping with a market meltdown, you’re likely to want to turn to a trusted human advisor with high levels of financial expertise but also human qualities like communication skills and empathy.

Key to the hybrid partnership is freeing up good advisors to provide value-added advice while using technology to: provide transparent online account access across multiple devices, streamline administration, and take care of routine transactions like rebalancing. Most robo-advisors recognize their own limitations and see good human advisors as potential partners. “We think advisors who are delivering value will continue to thrive,” says Wealthsimple CEO Michael Katchen.

Humanizing the robos

The hybrid trend has several aspects. Firstly, some robo-advisors themselves are adding more human services like basic financial planning and dedicated human advisors. But the larger, long-term trend is robo-advisors and other fintech companies teaming up with outside financial planners and conventional advisory firms in just about every segment of the investment advice business.

Of course, the trend is still in its early days and much of the activity is behind the scenes. Nonetheless, Thompson points to a flurry of deals and huge sums of money that the major financial institutions are pouring into this area to show that the trend is unmistakable. “The type of transformation that is going on is unprecedented,” says Thompson. “The dialogue of robos vs. humans or old vs. new really misses the richness of what’s going on, which is an entire industry re-inventing itself to be more modern, more in line with what investors want to pay for, and to be more in line with the consumer experiences of today.”

In one of the simpler forms of hybrid collaborations, independent financial planners are referring investments to a robo-advisor while providing over-all financial planning services. Typically the financial planner has online digital “dashboard” access to the account and incorporates portfolio information into their financial plans. While the robo-advisor retains full responsibility for managing the investments and matching the client to the appropriate portfolio, the financial planner might fill the role of trusted human advisor who can prepare an in-depth financial plan but also counsel clients about all aspects of their finances.

That might include, for example, talking clients through their jitters during a market correction. The robo-advisor typically discounts their rates compared to what they charge regular clients because of reduced need for the robo-advisor’s services. With client permission, the robo-advisor may draw the planner’s fees from the robo-advisor investment account and remit them to the planner. Already hundreds of financial planners are working with robo-advisors in this way or something similar. (We’ll describe an example in a minute.)

But there is much more to the hybrid trend than that. At a more complex but profound level, robo-advisors and other fintech companies are providing much of the technology to help major financial institutions transform their conventional advice businesses. These partnerships range from situations where robo-advisors provide their complete investment platform, process, portfolio design, and brand to other “white label” situations where the robo-advisor only provides the underlying technology and platform and the conventional financial institution partner does the rest.

Because these transformations are so large and complex, they will take time and often start small with pilot programs in niche areas of the business, but no one doubts their potential. “Our vision is to become the platform of choice,” says Randy Cass, CEO of Nest Wealth, a robo-advisor in which National Bank Financial has a major investment.

Nest Wealth is partnering with National Bank Financial to introduce hybrid capabilities at the bank and has also cut hybrid-type deals with three other conventional advisory firms. Meanwhile, the Bank of Montreal’s BMO SmartFolio robo-advisor offering is available alongside full-service brokerage accounts in its BMO Nesbitt Burns division. In the right client situation, BMO SmartFolio allows brokers to spend less time on administration and reviewing client accounts, and more time on value-added activities like financial planning and estate planning, says Silvio Stroescu, head of digital investing at BMO Financial Group.

And while Wealthsimple hasn’t publicly specified how it might help transform Power Financial Corp.’s diversified financial services empire, the fact that Power Financial has acquired a controlling stake in Wealthsimple at least indicates interest if not intent. Other robo-advisors such as Invisor, Justwealth and WealthBar have also announced hybrid deals of varying size and significance.

Not just for millennials

Meanwhile the robo-advisor’s traditional direct-to-consumer offering continues to evolve. Many of the features that were novel a few years ago are more commonplace today. That includes:

• digital access and communication through multiple devices;

• construction of largely passive portfolios using low-cost ETFs;

• online questionnaires that match new clients to the most appropriate portfolios for their circumstances;

• paperless account initiation or “onboarding” process;

• automated rebalancing of portfolios; and

• availability (in most cases) of highly qualified portfolio managers working to a fiduciary standard to step in and provide limited human advice when needed.

Robo-advisors were originally thought to appeal particularly to millennials because of the demographic’s early embrace of digital technology, but the focus has shifted more towards older investors with larger balances. While some robo-advisors have gone after an older clientel from the get-go, others have more recently added features that are likely to have particular appeal to this group, like basic financial planning, tax-loss selling and portfolio managers dedicated to specific clients.

Wealthsimple

Wealthsimple* is the industry market share leader and millennial robo-advisor of choice with its cool marketing vibe, youthful executives, and socially responsible investing (SRI) options. But it introduced Wealthsimple Black for clients with balances over $100,000, providing lower fees, tax-loss harvesting and basic financial planning.

CEO Katchen says that Wealthsimple Black is the fastest growing segment of its business and that the firm has seen its average over-all client age shift to 34 from 29 a few years ago.

The company has more than 80 per cent of Canadian robo-advisor users as clients, according to Strategic Insights data cited by the company. It has also expanded to the U.S. and Britain. Wealthsimple announced in March that it had reached $2 billion in client assets and 65,000 clients, with the “majority” in Canada. It is the only Canadian robo-advisor to release client figures.

WealthBar

WealthBar has always designed portfolios to generate cash flow and reduce volatily, features of particular appeal to older investors. But it has added services like dedicated advisors and basic financial planning reviews by certified financial planners.

Its average client age now is about 48, says WealthBar CEO Tea Nicola. In addition to ETF-based portfolios, WealthBar also offers pooled funds in specialized asset classes like real estate, a product usually only available to large account clients at conventional advisors. “We democratize a high net wealth way of investing,” says Nicola.

Justwealth

Justwealth strives to appeal to older investors with larger balances by taking a relatively sophisticated approach to managing portfolios.

Instead of providing six to 10 set portfolio options, which is typical, it provides 65. That allows it, for example, to offer distinct non-registered portfolios which use tax-advantaged ETFs and emphasize asset classes with relatively favorable tax treatment.

Furthermore, it provides personalized (rather than robotic) tax loss harvesting. Justwealth also offers RESP target date portfolios that become more conservative as the beneficiary gets closer to needing the funds in university. Justwealth’s average client age is the mid-40s, says President Andrew Kirkland.

Nest Wealth

Nest Wealth has always gone after an older, richer demographic from the get-go with a fee structure that makes it comparatively cheap for exceptionally large accounts.

Its average age is 47. Says Nest Wealth CEO Randy Cass: “We were always thinking those that were suffering the most pain weren’t the ones who had one, two, three thousand dollars and were just starting out, but were the ones who had 50,000, 100,000, 200,000 or more dollars and were getting defaulted into really high fee products that weren’t in their best interest.”

Robo-advisors are also adding new products to broaden their appeal. Invisor uses a goals-based approach with tracking against goals for investments, but uses much of the same information to also identify insurance needs. Life insurance can then be obtained online, while the company is also developing online capabilities for critical illness and disability insurance (which are currently offered offline). “It’s all related,” says Invisor CEO Pramod Udiaver.

In April, Wealthsimple introduced a high-interest savings account paying an impressive 1.7% annualized interest (not an introductory rate) with no minimum account balance and no withdrawal fees. Several robo-advisors are going after group RRSPs for small and medium businesses.

In the first three months of 2018, Nest Wealth signed up 200 employers after launching group RRSPs with three corporate partners. WealthBar also offers insurance and has a group RRSP offering with about two dozen employers. While robo-advisor benefits aren’t just about costs, low fees are obviously a huge part of their appeal.

Pretty much every robo-advisor does a fee comparison on their website which shows you can save a bundle in fees compared to investing with a conventional advisor using mutual funds. But comparing regular robo-advisor offerings that provide very limited advice with full-service mutual fund advisors isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison since the advice level isn’t generally comparable.

(As a side note, some robo-advisors do these fee comparisons without counting the fees embedded in the ETFs they use, which is misleading.)

Value in hybrids

But the thing about the new hybrid options is it allows you to save fees when the level of advice is comparable or maybe even higher compared to conventional advice. To see how, consider the example of Sandi Martin, an advice only certified financial planner with Spring Financial Planning, who prepares comprehensive financial plans for clients nationwide from Gravenhurst, Ontario, and who is also co-host of the Because Money podcast. In her financial planning work, she collaborates with her client’s investments advisor, who manages the investments.

While she happily works with whichever investments advisor her clients use, she also maintains a list of recommended robo-advisors and low-fee conventional advisors for clients to choose from if they’re looking to make a change. (While some robo-advisors provide basic financial planning, expect comprehensive financial plans like the ones prepared by Martin will go into far greater depth.)

Her recommended list includes robo-advisors Wealthsimple, Nest Wealth, and Justwealth, as well as low-fee conventional firms like Steadyhand, and Leith Wheeler.

Robo-advisors are usually willing to collect the planner’s fees for them from the investment account, but Martin chooses to bill clients directly for her services. While her fees vary according to client needs, Martin typically charges about $3,750 plus HST to prepare a comprehensive financial plan with a few years of follow-up monitoring and check-ins for a middle class couple with kids and reasonably straightforward planning needs.

That seems like a big cheque to write, but clients don’t usually need a comprehensive financial plan every year, so in many cases it’s reasonable to think of its value as being spread notionally over, say, four years. That results in an annualized expense of $1,060 or 0.35% of assets once HST is incorporated.

Robo-advisor fees including HST amount to $1,188 or 0.40% of assets (using Wealthsimple fees as an example). The fees embedded in ETFs used by Wealthsimple average about $750 a year or 0.25%. That brings the all-in annual fees for financial planning and investment management to about $3,000 a year or 1.0% of assets in this example. By comparison, a mutual fund advisor typically charges around 2.2% of assets per year on a balanced account, which works out in this case to $6,600 in actual dollars, or more than twice as much. Some mutual fund advisors give great financial advice and provide lots of value; others not so much.

Some provide regular, well-constructed comprehensive financial plans as part of their services; others not at all. But the bottom line is the average mutual fund advisor is going be very hard pressed to provide equal value for the $6,600 in annual fees that they typically charge for a middle class couple like this compared to the value that Sandi Martin teamed with a robo-advisor can provide for $3,000 a year.

And that is pretty clear evidence as to why the hybrid approach appears poised to transform the investment industry.

Monday, March 26

5:00AM

My alarm goes off, and I head downstairs for the best part of the day (the quiet part with hot coffee and no random Marvel movie questions because my son -- and everyone else -- is still asleep). I don’t often get up this early anymore, but I have two proposals to write for prospective clients and know I’m going to have a hard time focusing on writing them well between all of the meetings I have today. I spend about twenty minutes reading and then get down to business.

7:00AM

Lucy, my six year old, finds her way downstairs and wants to cuddle in my chair and read stories for a bit. How can I say no?

7:30AM

I add a few more details to my Weekly Success Planner, the document I use to document my successes over the past week, update the progress I’ve made on my goals for the quarter, and sketch out what’s happening for me in the coming week. While I’m in there, I add my notes to similar documents I use with colleagues in the Financial Planning Forum.

7:40AM

Upstairs for a shower, downstairs for breakfast, and all over creation (multiple times) to find library books, agendas, sweaters, and spiderman legos, and get the kids bundled up in appropriate outside gear for whatever combination of early spring weather they’re going to be outside in (Mittens? Running shoes? Winter boots with plastic bags inside them? I don’t even know anymore.)

10:00AM

Back from a walk with my Mom a half hour before my first call of the day (full disclosure, I thought it started at ten because I’m easily confused by calendars and that’s why we have Calendly), I start making notes for a six month plan update meeting later in the day.

10:30AM

Discovery call with a prospective client. I take loads of notes so I can write her proposal letter later in the week.

11:30AM

More prep time for my next client meeting. I grab some tuna salad I made yesterday and crackers to snack on since I might not have time for lunch.

12:30PM

Client update meeting. This is a client who had quite a few things on his action list, so we run through his progress on each and agree to reconnect once his tax return is filed.

1:30PMTurns out I do have time for lunch! I sit down with hot coffee and my current book, Snuff by Terry Pratchett. I’ve been re-reading them in order and am sad to be almost done with Discworld again.

2:00PM

Prep time for another update meeting. This client has been faithfully updating the spreadsheet we share, so I’m up to speed really quickly.

2:30PM

Another discovery meeting with a potential client.

3:30PM

Seth and the kids are walking in the door just as I finish up my call. Oscar yells “hello!” so loudly that I can hear it in my office with the door closed, so it must have been a good day. Seth and I work away in the kitchen getting ready for supper (let’s be honest: he gets ready for supper and I empty the dishwasher and get coffee ready for the next morning).

4:25PM

Client update meeting. He’s sped through the action list we created as part of his financial plan, and only has a few questions about rebalancing his accounts, so we’re done quickly. We agree to touch base again once he finds out some key information from his lawyer that will affect next year’s plan.

5:00PM

Supper with the family and a glass of wine with Seth while the kids talk about their day.

6:30PM

Plan presentation meeting with recently retired clients. This is the second plan I’ve done for these clients in three years, and it goes really well until we both realize I inserted a cash flow table from the wrong scenario into their report. I promise to fix it tomorrow and we schedule a second meeting to discuss it for Thursday.

8:33PMI

join our monthly Financial Planning Forum call three minutes late, which throws me off. There’s already a great discussion going on about one of our members’ new financial planning program that's in beta right now, and we use most of the hour talking about the data-gathering process and how to make it easier for everyone involved.

9:30PM

It’s been a long day, and Seth isn’t feeling great, but neither of us can resist watching the season five premiere of Silicon Valley.

10:15PM

Bed. Thank goodness.

Tuesday, March 27

6:00AM

My alarm goes off at a more normal time for me when I don’t have urgent work to finish up, and I head downstairs for hot coffee and to read my way through the articles and blog posts that might make my Monthly Great Reads. I share a few things, but nothing stands out enough to add to the list.

7:00AM

Lucy’s up first again, and we read a few of her favourite story books before anyone else gets up. Seth is going with Jupiter on a school trip this morning, and I’m heading to Barrie to work for the day with one of my best friends, so there’s a bit of a line up for the shower.

8:45AM

Breakfast is cleaned up, and Seth is going to walk the kids to school this morning, so I pack up my computer and jump in the van to head to the Barrie Public Library.

9:20AM

I’m fifteen minutes away from the library and the phone rings. It’s school, and Oscar’s hit his head pretty hard in the playground. Usually Seth is the guy on call for this kind of thing, but he’s on that field trip, so I turn the van around and head back home. I get to listen to a new fintech podcast and re-listen to our Because Money episode on Caring for Aging Parents, which is turning out to be my favourite episode of all time, so the hour and a half there and back isn’t a complete waste.

10:30AM

With Oscar settled in at home (looks like it might be a concussion, so we’ve got an appointment booked with the Nurse Practitioner in the afternoon) I get to work on correcting the report from last night’s client meeting.

11:00AM

Lunch with Oscar. It’s nice to have some time alone together, although I’m still a little worried about his head. He manages to ask roughly four million questions about The Legend of Zelda in thirty minutes, so he’s probably fine.

12:30PM

Updates to a cash flow and debt repayment plan for clients I’ve been working with off and on for a few years. I think it’s ready to go, given their new net income and balances, but I want to review it one last time before I send it.

1:30PM

At the Nurse Practitioner’s office. Oscar doesn’t have a concussion. Hooray! Lollipops all around.

2:00PM

Back in front of the computer, I wrap up the last of the new plan explanation and send it off, and then make a few changes to the book review post that’s due to publish today.

3:30PM

Seth and the kids are home, so I turn on my headphones to some random ambient noise channel and start answering the emails that have piled up so far today. There’s a long one with some new information for a current client, a few updates for a client who’s just got his homework in and is ready for me to book prep time, an email introducing another advice only colleague to a prospective client of mine who sounds like a better fit for her expertise, plus a whole raft of follow up emails to prospective clients I’ve talked to over the past few weeks.

5:00PM

Supper. Seth made baked potatoes with broccoli. Oscar begs for half of mine like he’s starving.

6:00PM

The kids are playing some kind of strange game with rules only they can understand, and Seth still isn’t feeling great and is resting on the couch, so I sit down to start writing this post. Thank goodness I started tracking my hours, because I can barely remember this morning...let alone yesterday.

7:30PM

Have tucked the kids in bed just in time for my last call of the day, another prospective client meeting, which goes really well. I’m looking forward to writing this proposal, although I just realized that my normal proposal writing block falls on a holiday this week, so if I don’t write them on Thursday they won’t go out until next Wednesday. Ugh.

8:15PM

The meeting wraps up a little earlier than I had booked it for, so I tell myself I’m going to put on my PJs and go downstairs...right after I update my Positive Focus for next week...and answer one last email...and reorder a few tasks scheduled for Thursday in my calendar…

8:45PM

Done for the night. Mix up a gin & tonic with Seth and mean to read for a bit before bed, since it’s No TV Tuesday (like Taco Tuesday, but --alas!-- fewer tacos)...but we got halfway through my favourite Doctor Who episode¹ last night so we cheat and finish it up.¹ “Silence in the Library,” if you’re wondering

Wednesday, March 28

6:50AM

A slow start this morning, but I manage to get about twenty minutes of reading in before Lucy turns up with an armful of books to read. There’s a great article from Jonathan Guyton about retirement planning in my feed, and I share it with an awkward sports metaphor before jumping in to Wild and Over in the Meadow.

9:45AM

A slow start to work (I’m sensing a theme here), since I had to stop in at the school office to make sure Oscar doesn’t do anything likely to result in another head injury...today, anyway. Today’s project is a Foundation Report for new clients who hope to retire in two years. I review my notes from our Discovery Meeting a month ago before jumping into work.

10:45AM

I’m halfway through the portfolio review when I realize I need to get in touch with Doug Runchey if I want to calculate my client’s CPP benefit. I quickly scrub the Statement of Contributions to get rid of any personal information and send it to Doug, along with the retirement and benefit claim date scenarios I’d like him to calculate.

12:00PM

I manage to join our last Financial Planning Forum call for March on time, and we have a rousing discussion about family planning after one of our members brings up a planning scenario he’s working on. I fully nerd out over how fun it is to talk shop with a group of smart, engaged planners.

1:16PM

Our call goes a little late after we get on the topic of networking with other professionals and how hard it can be. Once we hang up, I realize that I didn’t have lunch yet, so I eat some crackers and cream cheese while I wait for a fresh pot of coffee. That’s totally lunch, right? Right.

1:30PM

Back at my Foundation Report. I spend a good hour and a half exercising stringent scenario control, since the lesson on what happens when I don’t is just a little too fresh to be comfortable. I get through their current cash flow, estimate their necessary and discretionary expenses in retirement, compile their asset allocation from the Morningstar XRay data, start developing their retirement timeline, and draft most of the clarifying questions I want to ask in our meeting before I start losing focus. By then the kids have walked in the door, so I take a break to give them all a squeeze and start fielding Zelda questions again.

5:00PM

I’ve been pecking away at a few more details on the Foundation Report, but trying to focus is a losing battle and I finally give up, just in time for supper.

6:30PM

It’s back on the phone with my clients from Monday night. We go through their corrected report -- thankfully I didn’t screw anything else up, sheesh -- and finish up after a good two hours. I start sneezing and coughing halfway through...so, great.

8:15PM

Doctor Who and bed with a box of tissue. Oh, and a bit of bourbon.

Thursday, March 29

5:45AM

Feeling fine (because mothers don’t get to be sick for more than 12 hours at a time), I get to work on the Foundation Report while my brain is as fresh as it’s going to be today. I work steadily until 7, when Oscar springs out of bed and immediately starts quizzing me about who my favourite character in Zelda is. (Isn’t there just a little green guy in Zelda?) I evade his questions by aggressively reading books at him.

9:11AM

I send two invitation emails to planners who are thinking of joining the Financial Planning Forum. They’re both at really interesting stages in their respective careers and I hope this is the right time for them to join. Right away one planner calls me to talk a little more about the Forum, and we have a good chat about what she’s working on and what’s important to her right now.

10:15AM

Back to my client work. I’ve received Doug’s CPP calculations, so I start constructing the two retirement date scenarios I’m going to present in our meeting on Monday. There are still a few key pieces of data that I’ll need from the clients, but I’m feeling really good about the way this plan is shaping up and excited to talk about it with them.

3:18PM

Uh, I was so focused on the plan that I forgot Seth wasn’t going to be home to pick the kids up from school and I was supposed to do it. I’m alerted to this fact when Jupiter walks in the door crying because she didn’t know where we were. We rush across the street to school and I gather up Oscar and Lucy and bring them home. I mean, I knew I was absent-minded, but this takes the cake. Cake, hmmm. I think I forgot to eat today too.

4:00PM

Seth is back, so there’s an adult in the house again. I retreat to my chair and start writing up the proposals from my Discovery calls on Monday and Tuesday.

6:30PM

Late supper, kids in bed quickly. I’m feeling the effects of all that focusing and my brain is tired.

7:30PM

I spend a few minutes finishing one more proposal letter, and then get into my PJs and start updating this post, which is - I fear - novel-length and interesting only to my mother...maybe...if she was really bored.

9:18PM

B-E-D. So much bed. Maximum bed.

Friday, March 30

It’s a holiday, and since I’ve not historically been great at taking time off, I try really hard today. Without the benefit of my time tracker, it’s hard to know precisely what I did when, which I’ll count as a win for vacationing. There’s definitely some sleeping in, a late breakfast, a round of Legends of Zelda and a walk in here somewhere.