Certified financial planner shares valuable retirement planning insights learned from life-altering Fort McMurray wildfires
With a roughly three-decade history running his Calgary, Alberta-based practice, The Absolute Group, Kevin Cork has helped more than his fair share of retirees and soon-to-be retired Canadians through dramatic life transitions. But among all those stories, one in particular stands out.
“This was during the wildfires that ripped through Fort McMurray in 2016,” says Cork, a certified financial planner whose “unnatural love for charts and graphs” and “unconventional approach to financial planning,” as proclaimed on the Absolute Group website, has helped him guide countless clients.
“A couple I was working with lost their house during the calamity,” he says. “They only had about a 20-minute warning; they filled up their vehicle with whatever they could grab, and they had to evacuate. The fire burned their house down to its foundation.”
As Cork tells it, each person had a different emotional response. As the husband came to terms with the event after about six months, his wife was still grieving the loss of countless memories and mementos they were unable to save.
The terrible irony, however, was that they were thinking about moving anyway. In one of their previous meetings with Cork, they discussed what they were going to do with all their possessions. At that point, they were just several months away from leaving their jobs and moving to a smaller residence in southern Alberta.
“They were in their early 60s, and they wanted to get closer to their grandchildren and away from the long winters,” Cork said. “They were actually planning to move out of Fort McMurray within that same year or the next year.”
In that context, the fire that consumed their home of many decades wasn’t such a curse. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Cork says, his clients had an amazing opportunity to start anew.
“It allowed them to escape from the typical retirement transition where someone would drag their feet,” Cork said. “They literally did not have to worry about the baggage from their work life.”
As the tragedy gradually started retreating into the past, silver linings slowly emerged. As luck would have it, the wife was able to digitize all their family pictures before the fire hit. The photographs themselves were gone, but the images were all online.
The fire also relieved them from the agony of making one major decision. Around that time, property prices in Fort McMurray were still high, but declining amid uncertainty around the price of oil and gas. In that market, they had no idea how long exactly it would take for them to find a buyer for their old place, or the amount of money they could get for it.
“After some back and forth with the insurance company, they were able to arrive at a concrete number,” Cork says, noting that the process took months due to the avalanche of claims that insurers were faced with. “That money was then used in planning their next house and what their new lifestyle would be like.”
Beyond that, the fire catalyzed a transformation in the couple’s priorities. Originally, they would talk to Cork about getting a cottage somewhere at a low cost, and having a big boat. But after that harrowing experience, they decided they didn’t need that extra property. They settled into a house just outside of Edmonton and, with their newfound appreciation for life, opted to amplify their annual travel budget instead.
“Effectively, they became perfect financial planning clients too, because they were just as concerned about having all their insurances in place as they were about accumulating assets,” Cork says.
Because of their experience, the couple were much more receptive to the message that rather than ending a chapter of their lives, retirement is about starting fresh with a new phase. Beyond that, he says the ordeal really brought home the value of financial planning.
“One thing the husband mentioned in passing, but has stuck with me, is that their financial plan ended up being more permanent than the house,” Cork says. “The strategy we talked about wasn’t packed in their basement, so they didn’t lose it, and it didn't really change … It was something they were able to hold on to.”
