Short Takes: CPP Starting Age, Huge Bank Profits, and more

I recently made my annual withdrawal from my BMO Investorline RRSP.  Curiously, Investorline added an extra eight cents to the withdrawal.  I suppose it’s possible I mistyped the amount, but it seems unlikely.  I remember typing in the dollar amount and deciding to add the “.00” to the end.  The eight key isn’t beside the zero key on my keyboard.  Is it possible that RRSP withdrawals are reviewed and retyped by an actual human at Investorline, and the person misread the final zero as an eight?  If this is right, I’m surprised the process isn’t more automated.

Here are my posts for the past two weeks:

Transitioning Your Portfolio into Retirement

Quit Like a Millionaire

Choose Financial Independence

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

The typical Canadian who takes CPP at 60 instead of 70 “loses over $100,000 of secure lifetime income in today’s dollar” according to a report by the National Institute on Ageing (NIA) and the FP Canada Research Foundation.  I’ve written about this issue many times, but the emotional desire to take money now instead of later is difficult to overcome.  It doesn’t help that financial advisors have an incentive to advise people to take CPP at 60 so they sell less of their investments.  I like the way this report frames the choice as giving up more than $100,000 if you take CPP early.

Tom Bradley at Steadyhand has updated his bank profit indicator for 2020.  Among Canada’s top 6 banks, “the amount of [annual] profit per woman, man and child in Canada, comes in at $1,083.”  This is a staggering figure, and it’s just the profits.  We also pay banks enough to cover their taxes and other expenses.

Justin Bender explains where it makes most sense to use Vanguard Canada’s Retirement Income ETF (VRIF) in a recent video.

Big Cajun Man ran into some trouble with automatic payments coming out of his PayPal account.