#84: Retirement Rules living abroad

Full Episode Transcript
With Your Hosts
Micah Shilanski and Joe Curry

Micah: Welcome back to the plan your federal retirement podcast. I’m your host, Micah Shilanski. And I’m super excited to be here today because we have a special guest. Not only a great advisor that I’ve known for years but an advisor with another expertise that I don’t have. So I’m excited to talk about that. So welcome, Joe Curry. Joe, thanks for joining us today.

Joe: I’m happy to be here and excited to chat.

Micah: Yeah, well, if you couldn’t know a little bit by the accent, Joe is from Canada, and we actually met several years ago, and he does a fantastic job in financial planning as a whole, which I really love looking at that big picture of things but specialized with retirees in well Joe does not work with US federal employees at all. Joe, I got a decent amount of clients that talk to me about either having Canadian retirement accounts and that, you know, and they’re like, what do I do with this money or I’m so a lot of clients that are like some clients who say when I retire, I want to move back to Canada.

Joe: Yeah, it’s something that I mean, I know friends of the family who have, you know, left Canada to live in the States and take up careers and jobs torquing down South. So something that I’m running into, and I’m sure that those people have to find an advisor, or they shouldn’t be finding an advisor South of the border or your case. Yes, Northwest, but anyway, so yeah, it’s not surprising to me that you run into those situations.

Micah: Yeah, so this is this can be a new unique podcast if it doesn’t pertain to you might be interesting. Just sticking around, just kind of hear some differences that are out there. But if you are the few that this might apply, you’re gonna probably pick up some great information, so make sure you stay tuned to the podcast and the end of it, we’re going to share about some more information about Joe where you can find his great information, and of course, our action items. So Joe, let me start with a couple of questions that kind of come up is that Alright? Sounds good. So I know on my side, at least all clients are coming to me getting their federal employees, and then one of the spouses or then maybe there’s lived in Canada, they’re Canadian resident but then they move to the United States, and they have these Canadian retirement accounts that are there. And so they’re like, Micah, what do I do with these accounts? And I kind of look at them be like, Yeah, looks like an IRA. But it’s not exactly like what I’m thinking an IRA is. So Joe walk us through a little bit like what are those Canadian retirement accounts? And then we can kind of step to that next step, which is what do clients do about them if they’re still in the US? 

Joe: Sure. Yeah. So it’s, you know, there’s a lot of similarities to the accounts that you guys have for retirement accounts in the US but so the RRSP, or Registered Retirement Savings Plan is the most common account that we’d run into. And this is basically someone puts their savings into their pre-funding their retirement, they get a deduction off of their income. So you know, they have $100,000 of income, they put 20,000 into their RRSP. They’re only paying tax for the year on 80,000 is growing tax-deferred, and the idea is eventually, they’ll turn around and use that account to withdraw from in retirement to supplement retirement spending. So just like some of the accounts you guys have, there’s a certain point where you guys would call it an RMD. But basically, we call it the RIF minimum because those RRSPs have to transfer into a different type of account called a RIF or a Registered Retirement Income fun. As far as everything happening inside the account. It’s all the same, except it’s designed to create an income stream of withdrawals. And at age 71 and RSP money has to go in there. It can happen earlier, but it has to go there by age 71, and by age 72, that minimum income requirement kicks in. So the only there’s a couple of other variations of this account, which would typically be and this actually might be pretty common for what you’re dealing with, Micah is someone who had maybe some pension money, and then they ended up leaving so that pension money might get rolled into what we call a locked-in retirement account. As far as the rules around how they work, so it’s tax-deferred growth in there. And again, it has to be flipped over by age 71. Same rules, and there’s a minimum income. The only difference on that account is there’s actually a minimum that has to come out, but there’s also a maximum. And so I think that’s just the Canadian government’s way of trying to make sure that pension money is not all used at once and it’s spread out over retirement.

Micah: So that kind of transfers the reliability from the employer on the pension side. Now is this only a government pension, or can private companies create these?

Joe:  No, it’s private. It could be either or? 

Micah: Okay, so private company that you work for in Canada, and it had this pension account, and then you leave service, and you transition to America, when I get a job, get married, whatever those fun things are, and then this account instead of it being on their books as an employer account, they move this into a version of an IRA account, but it’s a little bit more locked up, where there’s a minimum and a maximum that you can withdraw. Is there an age requirement on that one as well, Joe, that you can’t touch it before certain age without a penalty, because there’s at 72, you have to start taking money out. But what about before that?

Joe: Yeah. So you can’t take you can’t start taking any income out of their colleagues. 55 Right. So you basically, unless there’s some special circumstances like some financial instability, like bankruptcy, or some of the things going on like that, or hardship, I think is what we would call it. That’s the word I’m looking for. Thank you, or some life expectancy, you know, issues around that. Like, there’s a couple of ways that you might end up getting access to that money, but for most people, it’s going to be you’re not going to touch it until at least 55. You have to start by 71. And then there’s the minimum, the maximum once you start taking, so there’s also this is probably getting beyond where you guys would be looking at it, but there’s a way after 55 where you can get 50% of it unlocked into an RRSP so there’s some nuances around now, but for the most part, again, for purposes of when you’re gonna take the income, it’s gonna work the same as an RSP.
Micah: So it’s very similar to the United States when we say something’s locked up, we mean, most the time, but there’s reasons why it could not be locked up, right, exactly. Fair enough. Okay, so we’ve got this age range then between 55 and 72. And we have to start taking money out doesn’t matter which account is somewhere in there. We have to start taking money out of this account. RMD level, whatever the government’s going to calculate for us, is that you’re going up. When it moves into this, this RRSP to this R I F  this RIF account, that’s it for the Income Fund. Do your investments have to change with that, whereas the only difference you’re just taking money out?

Joe: No, the only difference is you can’t put money in; you have to take money out. 

Micah: Gotcha. So there’s no con No. When you say you cannot put money in does that mean you cannot aggregate retirement accounts? You cannot make a contribution. It’s already split hairs on you.

Joe: Yeah, no, that’s a good point. So if you had some additional accounts with the same ally, so other locked-in accounts, you can move them together like you could combine them, and in most scenarios, so maybe you had the locked-in retirement account. And then there was some other pension. Again, this is probably not gonna be applicable for somebody who left the country but someone who was still in Canada, and they took another job and they had the same situation where they were going to move that money out of the pension; again, they can generally combine it as long as the it’s the same province, sort of as federal or provincial. Like there’s some different regulations around that. So you know, if you have an Ontario lock-in retirement account, but you also had a federal pension, but you wouldn’t be able to combine those if you took the money into the federal pension because I was right so…

Micah: So you have some like kind accounts. So what are those like kinds are you get kind of merge together. So in our worlds, it’d be like 401k accounts are kind of like kinds we can merge those things together, but pension plans, assuming we’re getting an income from them on the US side, we cannot merge those with other accounts.

Joe: Yeah, yeah. And then, as far as adding new money as in contributions out of your bank account, you can’t add anything once it’s gone over to the RIF.

Micah: Gotcha. Okay. All right. That’s really good to know. So now we have a client let’s just say hypothetical, not too hypothetical, because the clients that I was actually asking for your help on kind of how this all started, is got a client that has, you know, a couple $100,000 in an RRSP. They’ve been working in the United States for now, you know, 30-plus years. They may want to retire back to Canada. They may not want to retire back to Canada, but they’re not quite happy with the RRSP. With who someone’s over there who’s working on it. I don’t really feel that I can just rip the money out and just bring it over to the US and move it into an IRA account. I don’t think it works that way. But walk me through kind of what those rules are.

Joe: Sure. Yeah. So a couple of things. So if you have to lock a retirement account, even if you really want it to you can’t take the money out as we discussed. What do you mean option now the RRSP? Technically, the client can take the money out, but there’s going to be tax consequences because that’s going to any amount coming out of that account is going to go into income for the client. Right, and so, you know, when you’re attacking like the scenario you just highlighted, you know, probably in peak earning years is probably not the ideal time to be taking a couple of $100,000 additional income. So it’s probably not an option. You can’t really take it into an IRA account like it’s not an option to take it across the border. So basically, you’re stuck until you want to start to take income or pull the money into the account. You’re stuck with it in Canada. And there’s not a lot of options of what you can do with it. So again, you’ve left the country, you still have this, we call these retirement accounts or registered investments. So maybe you have it with another advisor. So in that case, that advisor can continue to hold those accounts for you they’re actually not supposed to be soliciting any advice at that point, at that point is almost becomes a self-directed account where you as the client, need to go back to the advisor and give them direction on what you want to do.

Micah: But what I was saying I was gonna make sure I’m understanding this real quick, Joe. So what I just heard you say was that once you leave Canada, if you have this RRSP account, you cannot get advice from your advisor in Canada. You can tell them what to do. They can be order takers, not trying to diminish their job, right? But they can be order takers and that’s I’d say go buy this go trade desk, go do this. But if you said hey, I want to retire in 10 years, how do I need to structure my investments provide me a retirement income I can never outlive. They’re not supposed to answer that question. Am I hearing that correctly?

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, like, probably the best way that immediate advisor can handle that is having some trends in education, but then leaving it for the client to come back and tell them what what they actually want to do.

Micah: Right. So you could talk in concept about things but not saying for which is I know what you do, right? You you working with your clients in Canada, you’re not going to say oh, great, yeah, you should invest in things that go up in value and hopefully to work in retirement. You’re like no great news. We’re going to build a retirement plan, right, we’re going to use guardrails, we’re going to this is how your income is going to work. This is how we’re going to do the investments. You’re gonna get that nitty gritty with your clients to make sure that those questions are answered. Correct. 

Joe: You got it? Yeah. 

Micah: That’s the piece that we’re going to miss then. In the interesting, okay. 

Joe: Yeah, yeah. And along those same lines of limited advice that’s available there. If you want to take this somewhere else, it did I get the institutions won’t even open up new accounts. So you won’t be able to transfer it to any other institution because they can’t give advice on it anyway, so they won’t take it. So the only option is to move it somewhere that you can open up a self-directed account where you’re just going in and making up the trades on your own and picking your portfolio on your own. But, and the research we’ve done, most of the institutions we talk to, they wouldn’t even they wouldn’t even open those accounts. So we just found one that would open it. And they also told us like you wouldn’t be able to open it online. You’d have to call them directly, and they would help you kind of bypass the IP address requirements to get the accounts set up. But again, they are reiterating the point that it has to be self-directed and like there’s no advice on the account.

Micah: We’ll see. That’s kind of where this all started, right? I had a couple of clients, and again, Joe for years, were at a conference, and I was like, Hey, I got these RSP accounts. I don’t want to take the money out, would you help me? No. Can I transfer it over to you? And have you managed these accounts? Right, because the current guy is not doing anything. Here. I am thinking he’s a slacker because he’s not doing anything. But he can’t do anything with these accounts. He can’t do that. So that advice aside from it.

Joe: Yeah, exactly. So we started trying to avoid that, and it is common like we asked why we have this conversation because our other advisor friends in the States have also approached me with the same thing. So it comes up there’s not really a lot of options there. So as you alluded to earlier, before you leave the country, it’s ideal to you know, pick who you want to be with forever and instead have a good portfolio.

Micah: So we’re going to create advisor marriages is what this program is going to be right is you really need to get in with that advisor for a lifetime before you leave the country to make sure they’re going to be the good fit for you. So and I think the answer is yes, because we’re talking about it when we’re going to pregame in this job but please correct me if I’m wrong. If a client is working with you before leaving the country, that’s what we’re alluding to, and then leaves the country you can still give them advice, you can still work with them. That’s all good to go. Because you had that relationship while they were still in residency.

Joe: Yes and no. So that kind of goes back to what I was talking about before so you can keep the account and just to be clear, this would only be retirement accounts. Anything, right? That is not in a retirement account could not stay with any Canadian institution, it would have to move out when we call non-registered money or open money. Okay, right. So that would have to qualify money. Yeah, exactly. So, so we could keep that account, obviously to this point. We’ve probably already given advice instead of a portfolio in alignment with you know, the plan and the goals and all that kind of stuff. But once they are no longer resident in Canada, that’s when we’re no longer able to solicit that advice and we’re more order takers. I should put it earlier.

Micah: Yeah, that’s probably that distinction somewhere buried in some in some code and we have the same thing on our SEC Security Exchange Commission rate or act was written in 1940s. So it doesn’t quite encompass everything for today’s laws, or today’s thought process on where people move, but there’s probably something in there that says, you know, they have to be a resident in order to give advice. That’s what I’m guessing at least,

Joe: A licensing issue is because if they’re not living so I’m in Ontario, so Ontario is provinces in Canada, and if they’re not living here, then I’m not able to give them advice if they’re in Florida, because I’m not licensed in Florida. Now that said to hold an account, I do have an account, just like we’re talking about client lives. in Florida, so I pay the licensing or whoever it is in Florida a fee each year to be able to hold that account, but still can’t give advice on it.

Micah: Craziness. Okay. So yeah, just a different way. So this is really good to know, right? Because we have a lot of clients that are talking about in retirement, they want to move to other countries; they want to travel around, they want to do these things. And so one of the things that I’m talking about with them, Joe, I know you do the same thing with your clients saying, okay, are we moving or are we having an extended vacation? These are two different things, right? Are we maintaining our US residency and we’re staying here, and we’re just traveling abroad for an extended period of time? Or are we putting up residency in another country? Now the rules start to change.

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Joe: Yeah, for sure. So if you’re coming back to Canada, for example, and you’re already a Canadian citizen, and you’re going to be living here. You know, as far as everything we just talked about. Nothing matters anymore because you’re a resident, you can work with the Canadian advisor. You have all your investments here and get advice on all those different accounts. So as far as that goes, you can kind of resume once you come back now. Obviously, if you’re going to a country where you’re not a citizen, that that’s a little different.

Micah: Yeah. Okay. Well, let’s talk about that for just a second payment, but the investments on a side, let’s just talk about some other considerations. I have several clients that are thinking about retiring, and babies somewhere between 75 and 80. They want to move back to Canada because one of them is a Canadian citizen. So they want to move back. What does that look like? Right? You spent a lot of decent amount of time in the States, and so we might have an ignorant point of view on what other things are out there. Don’t laugh too much. I really do. But what do you think? What are some things that we would be missing? Or what are things that are gonna be different about the US versus Canada on that?

Joe: Yeah, so I mean, there’s definitely a lot of similarities, right. As you mentioned, I’ve spent a lot of time in the US. So as far as you know, your day-to-day there’s not really a whole lot different, but bigger considerations specifically for what you’re talking about later in retirement is I mean, healthcare is going to be different, right. So that’s going to be one consideration. So we talked a little bit about this before, offline, but as far as getting like good health care, there’s good health care here in Canada. It is covered, as you know, you’re a citizen resident and so you get your like your card to pay for all your health care. So it’s kind of like your insurance, your health insurance that you have for your company or you pay for yourself, except that it’s actually provided to the province. And one of the downsides of that is wait times can be a big issue. So just because you need a procedure doesn’t mean you’re gonna get it in a timely manner right now. I mean, they tried to prioritize, but you know, something as simple as an MRA, maybe waiting, you know, a few months just to get in to get something seeing Wow, right now again, I think they try to prioritize based on the scenario we’re looking at like a shoulder versus cancer or something like that. But still, there’s definitely some issues around wait times. 

Micah: There’s not that not to pick on them, so to speak, right? But when I’m hurt no one else’s pain is real, but my own is wrong with me. And I want an answer to the thing wrong with me, and I’m not trying to be rude about anybody else, right? But when we have that cancer scare, when we have those other things that might be out there, man waiting three months to find out if it is cancer isn’t cancer, that’s that can be a long three months.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, even things like wait times in hospitals right now is pretty crazy. So we have one of the busiest emergency rooms in Canada were like my local hospital, and we’re just a fairly small town with a pretty big region. And you know, you could be in there for 12 to 24 hours waiting just to get seen by a doctor at this point. A lot of this is actually kind of a falling of COVID, like there’s so many healthcare workers. Just yeah, just shortages because people have left because of stress and burnout through everything with COVID and hasn’t recovered and now it’s like, you know, it’s gonna be a process involved at the local hospital and just kind of talking to them. I think there’s between four or 500 of job openings right now the hospital, and it’s not a matter of, like, find the people who were out there because they just made it there and there anymore, they’ve left the profession or they’ve just given up on hospital health care. They’re going to like public health things that are more nine to five. So it’s created a lot of issues that way, as far as like long-term care homes or in care or in homecare, that kind of stuff. It depends on your situation and whether that’s covered or they’re gonna have to pay for it. You can get private and end up paying a lot of money for something really nice if that’s what you’re looking for.

Micah: That’s a lot of money. So what’s the what’s the relative cost of that? 

Joe: Yeah, that’s a good point. So if we say a lot of money, those Canadian dollars, maybe it’s almost nothing but you know, it can be looking at upwards of like $10,000 a month depending on what kind of care you’re getting. Right, so it could be significant.

Micah: With US costs right, he’s gonna be state or regional is gonna go up and down. But 10,000 I’ll at least from Alaska, $10,000 a month, and a long-term care home; that would be a deal. It’s going to be more than that up here.

Joe: Yeah. So I would be like the high end, I would say, I mean, you could definitely probably, if you’re in Toronto or Vancouver, find something more than that. And then you have kind of more the standard long-term care, I guess you could say, and you might be in the neighborhood. Of like, say $3,000 a month to get the private room. But if you can’t afford that, you will still get care. But what happens is you don’t really get to pick where you end up. You also probably will get a private room like there’s no guarantee of anything you’re gonna get. You just basically get wherever there’s an opening, and then you’re subsidized by the government for those spaces, but it’s based on income. So as long as you have income coming in, like you won’t get subsidized, right? But if you have no income coming in or under a certain threshold, then that’s when they’ll they’ll subsidize it so you’ll get that care one way or another. Might not be where you want it. 

Micah: Okay, so if you have income coming in, so kind of like what we have in the states that would be like a Medicare patients, I’m sorry, Medicaid, Medicare, opposite 65. Medicaid is kind of poverty, that you’d have to be out of pocket paying for your long-term care, unless you had long-term care insurance, it would cover it, but health insurance doesn’t cover long-term care at all in the States. And so you need to be an out-of-pocket expense and once you blew all of your money in you were literally in poverty. Every state is a little bit different. But like less than $15,000 in your bank, it wasn’t $10,000 in your bank account. You can still have your home a lot of other restrictions, but any income that you have coming in a pension that has to be assigned to the State and what we call a miller re-trust. So basically, you have no money, and then the state would kick in and pay for it. So it sounds like some similar similarities.

Joe: For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay.

Micah: So what I heard on the on the healthcare side is good health care, but you’re gonna have a delay, you’re gonna have a time issue that’s going to be there. And so does that mean you got to budget for a secondary health insurance cost do you do what do you do? What do you recommend to clients?

Joe: Yeah, so I mean, so there’s some things that wouldn’t be covered in which you mentioned, I guess, as offline, we talked about that. Like if you want some experimental, you know, cancer treatments, or there’s certain things that haven’t made it onto like the provincial list where I’ve covered drugs or treatments now, so there’s some other programs that you can apply for or they look at a deductible based on the income you do have, whether they’ll cover some of it or how much of it they’ll cover. So there’s some other potential issues there. If there’s something you need, you might not get it. But there are programs to help with that. Other considerations. I don’t know where he’s going with that feeling. I lost my train of that and..

Micah: Secondary insurance, right? Yeah. So states insurances, primaries, even the government insurance is primary, but then do you buy a secondary thing? Hey, if I don’t want to wait 90 days for an MRA, I guess I could try to fly to the States and do it. But what’s another option if I wanted to stay in Canada?

Joe: Yeah. So there’s not a whole lot of options there. Because the healthcare system is designed to be one tear, not multifaceted, right? So there are you know, there’s actually as kind of a big debate in Canada right now, because there’s some kind of somewhat private clinics starting to pop up and federal government is basically telling the provinces if they don’t do something about that they’re gonna kind of withhold health care funding. So there’s some gray lines of what is available from a private standpoint, but it’s not widespread. It would be very expensive, in most cases, not covered by any kind of insurance. 

Micah: Gotcha.

Joe:  So there’s not really an option. There’s more just having the money to cover it or if you’re a business owner, you could put it through your business through healthcare spending accounts. But if you’re retired, that’s not going to be overly helpful. So there’s there’s not really a whole lot else you could do there’s some insurance like I’m not sure if you guys have best doctors or not, but there’s some best doctors insurance which basically can get you medical second opinions from places like Cleveland Clinic, Harvard, different places like that. Doesn’t necessarily, so I’m not sure that’s a Canadian thing or not. But anyway, so there’s a little bit around that’s not really a popular thing. Like there’s not a whole lot of people talking about it or doing much with it, but there’s a little bit of coverage. And some may be additional funding available through that. So that’s ended up put those products are generally allocated or used by kind of higher net worth population would even say the mass of fluid. So there’s a few things kind of fringe benefits to look at, but they’re not very mainstream.

Micah: So this is something good. I mean, when you think about Canada, if you’re thinking about moving somewhere else, it’s the same conversations that we would both have with our clients, right? About saying, Okay, if we’re going to move someone for retirement, and that means more than likely we’re gonna need more medical care as we age, right? Just kind of makes sense on that side. Are you going to a place that’s going to provide the level of care you want? That’s that’s kind of the question. If the answer is yes, and he deals check all your boxes and you’re fine with that, well then sweet, and then you know, let’s have that conversation. If he goes, this is, you know what, I’m really used to within, you know, a week being able to get my doctor’s done treatments, you know, except for specialists those always do take longer, but I can move the needle a little bit sooner. Okay. Maybe this Canada is not the right option for me, we’d look at another country with options or do we just have a separate bank account? I’m saying, Okay, do you need to fly somewhere else to get these medical treatments? Right, and it’s not one is good or bad? I think it’s knowing what it really is. And then how do you plan for that in retirement? Do you think that’s fair to push back on that?

Joe: Yeah, I think the key there is planning ahead, right? Not saying okay, I’m gonna move to Canada. I’m going here and showing up and realizing that everything’s not gonna be as available as you thought it might be or what you’re used to. And I think that’s whether you’re planning for finances or where you’re going to live or health care. I mean, like all of us the same race playing in the head is gonna help you prepare and limit the number of surprises. So I mean, I think everything you’re saying makes makes perfect sense.

Micah: Yeah, just everything and it’s one of those things too, when I have clients that come in, I don’t know if you have this, but sometimes I have clients that come in and be like the five best places to retire to right, some news article would write about that and it says, I want to go here. This is great. I’m really glad this news article has an opinion about this. Have you ever been there? Have you met anyone from there, have you know, let’s do a little due diligence before we kind of make this big move. I have a client that’s moving to Japan, and I’m waiting two months, and he’s gonna live their life in Japan. His wife is from Japan. And so he’s going to move back over there. And we’ve gone through like the last two years kind of evaluating all these things. You know, when you have to have a US form signed, because you’re still a US citizen. Something will come up renewing your passport, something else and you need a notary, and you’re in Canada. How are you going to get it signed? Right? It’s not impossible, but there’s not notaries at the bank that can do US notaries in Canada or Joe Am I incorrect about that? I’m just I’m assuming that they don’t have that readily accessible in Canada. Not to my knowledge. No. Yep. So it’s like little details like that, though. That really matter in retirement. It’s the health insurance details. It’s how am I going to get things signed? How am I going to move money back and forth? Where do you keep your money? Right? Do you want to keep your money in the States? Do you want to move all of your money into Canada? What are the pros and cons what banks will talk to each other? So Jonah, you and I were just chatting about IRA accounts right up to just our RSP accounts and IRA accounts right? is kind of the Canadian equivalent and ours, but they don’t play well together. They look really similar, but they don’t play well. What about bank accounts? How are those going to work? Right? There’s so many questions when we’re thinking about moving overseas, that we really need to spend some time and look at

Joe: Yeah, and then I mean, on top of all that there’s also a currency risk and as far as what do you do with your currency? And if you move at all or what have you come back, and there’s a lot of risk there as well.

Micah: Yeah, that’s a fantastic point. Yeah. Some other things that you’ve a day to day life we’ve never thought about, right? We might think about currency when you’re traveling abroad somewhere, but it’s like a two second thought because you’ve already bought the tickets to go to Italy, and it doesn’t really matter what the Euros are doing, you’re going anyways that’s different on like a two-week trip in the next 20 years of your life can be a big difference.

Joe: Absolutely. I really look back like 15 years. I think the FA and US owners were on par.

Micah: Yeah. So those are great things to think about, right and say, how are you going to do that? Awesome. Joe, I love to have you on the podcast. This is great information, whether you’re moving to Canada, whether we’re going to travel abroad, or live abroad, excuse me, I think these are good things to think about. This podcast is all about action items. So I’ll do the first one on a tag in here. I’d love you to do an action item for our listeners too. But the first one I wouldn’t say is, you know what? Think about where do you want to live in retirement, whether it’s a different state, whether it’s a different city, whether it’s a country, whether you’re going to travel abroad, but start thinking about these things now. And then we can start going through the backlist podcast, and every time we said Canada’s, replace it wherever you’re thinking about moving to, and what are the answers to those questions?

Joe: Yeah, so I think along those same lines that I would say, if you don’t think you’re gonna live where you are today, then maybe start coming up with a list of maybe your top five destinations or where you think you might want to spend retirement and then and then you want to have a list of questions that you need for research. So you know, what this healthcare looks like, what the tax consequences, what’s going to happen to my retirement accounts and all that kind of stuff. 

Micah: Yeah, well, I’m gonna piggyback on that one for the third action item that you can look at this week, which is what is your healthcare planning in retirement? Whether you’re staying in the States or whether you’re going abroad, right and long-term care in health care because these are different things. What is that plan? All of my clients have to have a long-term care plan. We got to have a discussion. We got to go through it. That doesn’t mean they have to have long-term care insurance. That doesn’t mean we got to set $500,000 aside for it, but we got to come up with a plan that says when not if when this happens, what are we going to do anything that someone is really important to think about? 

Joe: Absolutely. 

Micah: Joe, thank you again so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it. I like nerding out on these little details and kind of learning this stuff, and I appreciate you being the expert. And as our audience appreciates this conversation, where can they find more information about you? 

Joe: Sure. So we have a website called your retirement planning. So your retirement planning simplified.ca. And it’s all education around retirement-related topics, both money and non-money, purpose, and all that kind of stuff. And from there, you can find anything else you need by me.

Micah: Fantastic. Your retirement planning simplified.ca 

Micah:: You got it? Fantastic. Go check Joe. Happy planning.

Joe: Thanks, Micah

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