Veteran money manager says industry simply not doing enough to fill knowledge gap in retirement income
The sheer volume of “superficial information” on the internet is hurting people’s retirement planning, according to a veteran advisor.
And David Little, of Little Wealth Management Group, believes advisors across the company have to up their game to address this online vortex of information. He said future retirees, unbeknown to them, are missing out on the potential of a better lifestyle in the Indian summer of their lives.
To that end, Little plans to grow his practice by focusing even more on “The Final Chapter” of retirement, while he has also founded the Retirement Income Planners of Canada, a website that invites people to ask questions about that vital stage of life.
He said that while every advisor preaches 100% commitment to this phase of income planning, the numbers do not bear this out, with approximately less than 40% of people in Canada having a will and about only 20% having a written formal financial income plan.
“If everyone says they are doing it, these numbers would be exactly the opposite,” he said.
“There are several guys I know that definitely work in this field: a guy in Vancouver, a guy in Winnipeg, and I believe there’s an office or two up in Ottawa and I’ve come across some guys in Quebec. I am sure there are others out there but the fact of the matter is, when you try to Google to find all this information, not a lot of people are popping up saying 'we are doing this'.”
Little highlights an example of a client who was unaware of the complexities around the tax implications of his early retirement payoff and exactly when the optimum time was to take his pension out; all information unavailable from a Google search that required a greater level of expertise.
Little believes that with the baby boomer generation’s retirement transition only just clicking into gear, he is optimistic his practice can grow and fill this gap in the market.
He said: “The simple 101 of things are on the internet but when you have to go into the Master’s degree area, you are not going to find that stuff on any subject. You can go into a doctor’s surgery thinking you might need an operation because you aren’t feeling well and then go to a doctor and they go, no it’s got nothing to do with what you’ve been diagnosed with.
“It’s just superficial information; it doesn’t get into the nitty gritty of all the things you need to know about when you retire. And here’s something funny – no matter how many people come through my door, whether they have got $500,000 or $5 million, there’s always one question that both groups ask me: do I have enough?”
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