Building Wealth and Living From It Are Two Different Conversations
Financial Planning for Retirees
Retirement changes everything about how your finances need to work. The accounts that spent decades growing now need to generate reliable income. The insurance that protected your earnings needs to reflect a different life. And the estate you've built needs a structure that protects what passes forward. Most of the advice available to retirees was designed for people still accumulating — which is exactly the gap we fill.
The planning conversations that matter most before the last day of work
RRIF conversion timing affects your tax position for the rest of your life
The Registered Retirement Income Fund (RRIF) minimum withdrawal rules, the age at which conversion happens, and how RRIF income interacts with CPP, OAS, and other sources all need to be coordinated — not addressed one at a time as they arise.
CPP and OAS rarely optimized - and the difference is signficant
The timing of when you take Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Old Age Security (OAS), how they interact with other income, and whether OAS clawback is a risk are decisions most retirees make without projections showing the lifetime impact.
Drawing from accounts in the wrong order costs more than most retirees realize
RRIF, TFSA, non-registered accounts, and pension income all carry different tax treatment. The sequence in which you draw from each — and in what amounts — determines your lifetime tax burden and how long the money lasts.
Estate planning needs to be reviewed as retirement evolves
Wills, powers of attorney, beneficiary designations, and the structure of what transfers to the next generation all need to reflect your current reality — not the one that existed when they were last updated.
Insurance needs change significantly in retirement - and for some, self insuring becomes the right answer
Life insurance may need to be restructured, wound down, or replaced with a different strategy entirely. Health, dental, and critical illness coverage that came through employment needs to be evaluated — and for retirees with sufficient assets, self-insuring certain risks is a legitimate planning conversation worth having.
This is where we make it last
At Modern Vision Planning, William Chan works with pre-retirees who want to enter retirement with a clear, coordinated plan rather than a collection of financial products accumulated over a career. From CPP timing and RRSP maximisation to benefits gap planning and spousal income splitting strategy — every recommendation is independent and built entirely around your situation. For pre-retirees specifically, that means making sure the decisions made in the next few years reflect the full value of the decades that came before them.
The next thirty years deserve the same attention as the last thirty
The retirees we work with came in uncertain whether their plan would hold. What they left with was a clear picture of their income, their estate, and the confidence that everything was working together — for as long as it needs to.
