How this former food industry business owner is finding new identities in retirement. Plus: How to calculate a capital gain on your cottage – and save on taxes

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Tom Mitchell, 69, retired in April, 2023, after 40 years of running his own manufacturers’ agent firm. It’s a sales force for food service equipment manufacturers in Western Canada serving factories across North America and Europe, he explains in this Tales from the Golden Age article.
“I had a succession plan for several years before retiring, which saw my daughter and her husband take over the company,” he says. “She always loved the business; she used to come with me on sales calls when she was six years old.” His daughter then worked in the business for 13 years before taking it over last year. Mitchell is still a strategic adviser to the business, but his daughter runs the show. Mitchell also has two other kids; one is in university, and the other plays in a band.
“The first few months of retirement were like a holiday,” he says. “My wife and I travelled a bit, but she is 12 years younger than me, runs her own successful business and is finishing her MBA, so she has a busy life.” Like many men who retire before their wives, Mitchell says he became the house husband, responsible for most of the cooking, grocery shopping and cleaning, which, he adds, he’s comfortable with because he wants to support her and her business.
“I’ve also become a lot more active in my community. While working, I was part of a group that helped to build a lawn bowling club in downtown Calgary, and I’m on the board.” He is also chair of the board of the Manufacturers Agents for the Foodservice Industry, and more recently became the Canadian chief ambassador for the Burnt Chef Project, an organization in the U.K. that provides mental-health support and education for the hospitality industry.
“The challenge with retirement is giving up your identity and finding new ones,” says Mitchell. “After 40 years, I can no longer say I’m a business owner, which was hard to get used to at first.” He also noticed that some former colleagues have stopped talking to him now that he’s retired, which, he adds, has been disappointing. “Maybe they feel they can’t relate to me now, or I let them down by leaving the grind. It’s like I’m dead to them now.” It’s created a feeling of loss that Mitchell says he has had to mourn.
“However, I’ve gone out and made some new friends through other activities and have met some really interesting people.”
Read the full article here.
Are you a Canadian retiree interested in discussing what life is like now that you’ve stopped working? The Globe is looking for people to participate in its Tales from the Golden Age feature, which examines the personal and financial realities of retirement. If you’re interested in being interviewed for this feature and agree to use your full name and have a photo taken, please e-mail us at: [email protected] Please include a few details about how you saved and invested for retirement and what your life is like now.
Matthew works as a consultant, earning about $180,000 a year, although it varies. Lizzy works in sales, earning $80,000 a year. He is 57, she is 56. They are hoping to quit working in three years or so.
Short term, their goals are to renovate their house. Longer term, they might sell the house and move to a smaller town. They want to travel while they are still healthy and help their two children, 23 and 26, with a down payment on a first home.
Neither has a defined benefit pension but they do have about $1.3-million in savings and investments. They also have an investment property with a mortgage. Now that mortgage rates have risen, the property is cash-flow negative by about $500 a month. “We will most likely sell it off in 2030,” Matthew writes in an e-mail.
“Will we be in a position to retire at age 60 with our target of $100,000 a year in after-tax income and not worry about running out of money?” Matthew asks. “In what order do we deplete our savings in retirement?”
In this Financial Facelift, Mike Burns, a certified financial planner at Objective Financial Partners Inc. in Markham, looks at Matthew and Lizzy’s situation.
Want a free financial facelift? E-mail [email protected].
“My mother was not famous and yet she felt her son was kind of famous,” writes the Canadian film director Barry Avrich in this first person essay. “My life path and career in film – inspired, encouraged and nurtured by her – resulted in what I believe was the blueprint for her longevity and the absence of any kind of generation gap between us. A blueprint others could learn from.”
Avrich and his mother were 35 years apart but they were always close, he writes. “And when she died in January, it made me think. There was nothing about her approach to parenting that required psychoanalytic study (of which she was mostly leery anyway), it was her commitment to doing the work to be relevant and be part of her child’s journey that helped her avoid the brutalities of age until the last minute.”
Faye was brought up in a Depression-era household in Montreal as the only daughter of a butcher trying to support five children and his wife during the Second World War, who himself had arrived 15 years earlier escaping religious persecution in Eastern Europe. There was no money for a fancy education but her father introduced her to culture wherever it could be found, he says. “From theatre and concerts to movies, she devoured it all. It would be her education and form the basis of her appreciation of my journey to be a filmmaker.”
Avrich says he had the academic aptitude of a piece of drywall. “My mother’s strategy for me was not that of her generation – she would not force me to be an accountant, lawyer or dentist.” Her unconventional thinking was to immerse him into the arts early where the rules of academia might be less stringent.
What developed was the life lesson of how Avrich’s mother erased the potential of any predictable generation gap that might have resulted in the typical friction of having a parent that might seem disconnected.
Read the full article here.
First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
The improvements you make over the years to a cottage or investment property can save you on taxes when you sell, writes personal finance columnist Rob Carrick.
Coming changes to the capital-gains inclusion rate have jolted not just wealthy Canadians, but also people with long-held cottages or a second property owned as an investment. Starting June 25, they will have to pay tax on two-thirds of the capital gain above $250,000; half of gains up to that threshold will be taxable. Currently, the 50-per-cent inclusion rate applies to all capital gains.
A capital gain is the selling price minus the purchase cost, acquisition costs and the amount spent on improvements made while you owned the property. This combined amount is called the adjusted cost base.
Tax expert Armando Minicucci recalls an interaction with a client who sold a secondary property and was in a panic about what was seen as a big tax liability.
“I sat down with them and said, okay, you’ve owned this property for however many years – come up with a list of all the capital improvements,” said Mr. Minicucci, a partner in the tax practice at accounting and business advisory company Grant Thornton. “They came up with the list and it significantly reduced the resulting capital gain.”
Read the full article here.
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As warmer weather comes to most parts of Canada, many people are readying their gardens for another fruitful spring and summer. And, writes Rebecca Gao in this health and fitness article, while many Canadians tend to their plants simply for the joy of it, the pastime also offers some real health benefits.
“When we garden, every part of the body is benefiting,” says Dr. Andrea Furlan, a physician at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute and an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine.
First off, it gives you a cardio boost – any movement that gets our heart rate up and causes us to breathe harder. By that definition, gardening fits the bill – especially for people who are more sedentary or a bit older, Furlan says.
“So while watering flowers might not get your heart pumping, tilling the soil to get it ready for seeds or pushing a heavy wheelbarrow full of dirt is sure to get you panting – a sign that your cardiovascular system is engaged. No wonder a 2023 study from Penn State found that adults aged 65 and up who garden had better cardiovascular health than those who didn’t.
Here, from mobility to mental health, more good reasons why gardening is great exercise.
Q: Curious how working out of the country would affect CPP. My wife and I worked in Australia for three years during our ‘high earning’ years. There would be no CPP contributions for these three years.
We asked Fred Zhou, senior financial planner at TD Wealth Financial Planning, to answer this one.
A: Working abroad can impact your retirement plans back in Canada, particularly if you’re not contributing to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) during that time. The CPP plays an important role for many Canadians as it provides a steady stream of income during their retirement years. As mentioned, since there were no contributions for these three years due to working in Australia, this may have an overall impact on your CPP benefits. The reason being, CPP benefits are calculated based on the amount you and your wife contribute over your working years (generally in Canada). All else being equal missing three years of contributions into CPP could mean a decrease in overall CPP benefit and overall retirement income, which could impact your retirement goals.
It’s worth noting, though there’s not enough information to determine for sure in this case, that generally, employment must take place in Canada to be considered pensionable under the CPP. However, in certain situations, employment outside of Canada may be pensionable – situations such as if a person is working outside Canada for a Canadian company or the Canadian government. If unsure, either a worker or payer can “request a ruling” for the determination of eligibility from the CRA in certain circumstances.
It was noted that these were your highest earning years, potentially allowing you and your wife to explore other investment options and vehicles to help offset the potential reduction in CPP benefit/retirement income. It is recommended that the family consult with a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) and Tax Professional who can help you develop a comprehensive financial plan that considers your time abroad and ensures you’re adequately prepared for retirement when you return to Canada.
Have a question about money or lifestyle topics for seniors? E-mail us at [email protected] and we will find experts and answer your questions in future newsletters. Interested in more stories about retirement? Sixty Five aims to inspire Canadians to live their best lives, confidently and securely. Sign up for our weekly Retirement Newsletter.