Optimizing Your Investments and Finances for the New Year and Beyond

Today we have Robb Engen on the show who is the creator of one of the most respected personal finance blogs in Canada over at Boomer and Echo.

He’s been writing about personal finance and investing on the blog for more than 10 years, and he’s also a fee-only financial planner, where he helps Canadians achieve their financial goals through unbiased and objective advice.

In this interview, you’ll learn:

1. The most impactful financial decisions that we Canadians can make, to set ourselves up for success.
2. The different components that you should look for when analyzing if there are any critical flaws in your investment portfolio.
3. What a good investment portfolio structure is for somebody looking to retire early, and what withdrawal strategies to consider so that you don’t run out of money in retirement. 

We cover all that and much more, during the interview.

Links from the episode include:

The EQ RRSP, TFSA, and Savings Account

Robb's Site

What passive investing style are you? (video presentation)

Passiv (the tool that I use for tracking my investments and rebalancing)

Here is the full list of all the questions we covered:

1. With the new year kicking off, I’m sure many Canadians have a New Year’s resolution of getting their finances in order and optimized. What would you say are some of the most impactful financial decisions that we Canadians can make, to set ourselves up for success? 
2. Which ones can we do ourselves vs having to seek out the help of a financial planner like yourself?
3. I noticed that one of the things that you do as part of your financial planning practice are investment portfolio reviews. For anybody new to this, what is an investment portfolio review, and what are the different components that you like to look for when analyzing if someone has any critical flaws in their investment portfolio?What parts of the portfolio review can most Canadians easily do ourselves vs having to hire a professional like yourself for that extra level of optimization?
4. For those that are working towards an early retirement, or are already there, is there a particular portfolio structure that you like?For example: A type of bucket strategy, or something different (ex. just doing a flat withdrawal from a balanced portfolio, etc.)
5. When it comes to withdrawing from your portfolio in an early retirement, or a traditional retirement, which approach or approaches due you tend to prefer so that we don’t run out of money in retirement, but also so we don’t have too much money left to spend by the time we pass away (ex. 4% rule, 3-3.5% rule, VPW, something else?)
6. With the record low interest rates that we’ve been experiencing, many of us Canadians are re-evaluating the fixed-income/safe portion of our portfolio. How do you approach the dilemma of buying a bond ETF for the fixed income portion of your portfolio, vs just putting that money towards a really high interest savings account which can give us higher interest than the bond ETF, plus then we also don’t have to worry about losing money if the interest rates go up in the future.
7. Where can listeners go to learn more from you or hire you to get their questions answered?