Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a concern for Canadians, particularly for those planning upcoming trips. The World Health Organization has assessed the global risk for coronavirus as “very high”.
Allianz Global Assistance
EFFECTIVE MARCH 11, 2020, WE HAVE DETERMINED CORONAVIRUS TO BE A KNOWN EVENT FOR TRIP CANCELLATION AND TRIP INTERRUPTION.
For clarification, the March 9th cruise warning, issued by Public Health Canada, is being treated as a Level 4 travel advisory by Allianz Global Assistance.
Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption benefits:
policies with Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption benefits that are purchased on or after March 11, 2020, any Trip Cancellation or Trip Interruption claims related to coronavirus will not be payable.
policies with Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption benefits that were purchased before March 11, 2020, policyholders will still be eligible to claim for Trip Cancellation if the Government of Canada issued a travel advisory related to coronavirus prior to their departure date, that advised against non-essential travel (Level 3) or all travel (Level 4) for their destination.
Emergency Medical benefits:
Plans with benefits for Emergency Medical coverage remain unchanged.
Policyholders with Emergency Medical benefits who contract coronavirus at their destination will continue to be eligible for emergency medical treatment, unless the Government of Canada issued a travel advisory related to coronavirus prior to their departure date, that advised against non-essential travel (Level 3) or all travel (Level 4) for their destination.
This worksheet is meant to help you start thinking about your insurable need.
This worksheet calculates numbers based upon certain assumptions:
The Rate of Return you enter below (on investments) is the percentage over and above the Rate of Inflation (RoI). Therefore the investment will be something with a ROR > RoI (i.e. not a GIC, T-Bill/Bond nor bank account)
The gross annual income needed doesn’t change.
Because we are calculating ROR as net of inflation, we are not building inflation into any of the other numbers.
All debts will be paid off by the policy.
The annual income needed will be ongoing living expenses (This means things like groceries, utilities, etc – debt servicing zero’d by paying off debts.)
The Annual Income Need will be funded through Returns on investment (ROR) without drawing down the investment.
The value of all existing assets (Business, Investments, Property excluding Primary Residence) will not increase faster than the rate of Inflation, will not decrease, and will be drawn down to zero at such a rate that the value runs out just as the 2nd person reaches end of life. (Therefore remaining assets will be the investment from the policy providing the annual income need).
We will contact you after you have submitted the worksheet to discuss the results to help you tailor the resulting needs to your specific situation in case the assumptions built into the worksheet aren’t perfect for your situation.
My wife and I just returned from a trip to the USA. We went down for a family reunion, and then visited our favorite spots in the western part of the country.
Family Reunion
We started in Nebraska. We flew through Minneapolis to Omaha where we rented a car and spent the night in a Best Western. The hotel was very nice. The room was large, and breakfast was great.
We drove to the family reunion in a state park. The heat and humidity was much higher than we were used to, but there was lots of chilled water so we were fine. It was a great gathering. My wife met 6 of her Grandmother’s first cousins.
AMTRAK!
We returned to Omaha through Lincoln. We stopped in the Haymarket region for lunch and ice cream.
Back in Omaha, we drove around the city a bit. We saw parks, a large pedestrian bridge, and a number of landmarks.
We went into a museum located in a former Train Station.
We boarded an Amtrak train. It was scheduled to depart, but due to flooding and summer track work the train was delayed. We didn’t depart until 01:30.
The coach seats were very comfortable. My wife had a great sleep in them. Had I been 6 inches shorter so that I was the design height for the seats, I too could have had a very good sleep.
We spent 40-some hours on the train on our way to San Fransisco.
San Fransisco
In San Fransisco we visited a number of spots.
We saw the XXXX musuem which is a victorian style manor.
We walked through Fisherman’s Wharf. Marcia bought a T-Shirt at Hard Rock Cafe.
We forwent the Alcatraz prison as we had seen it on a previous trip to SF.
We saw the Painted Ladies (seen in Full House) as well as the house which was used for the Mrs Doubtfire movie.
We rode the Cable Cars. I had visited the Cable Car museum on a previous trip but hadn’t ridden on them. This time we bought transit day passes which included the Cable Cars.
We went to Gharadelli Chocolates where I had possibly the most expensive Banana Split on the continent. The difference compared to DQ was they used hard ice cream (made in house) of the appropriate flavours (chocolate, strawberry, vanilla).
San Diego
We flew to San Diego. We stayed at the Days Inn where they were renovating the rooms.
The hotel shuttle took us down to the USS Midway Museum. This Aircraft Carrier is a sight to behold. I’ve been in it before but Marcia hadn’t. We toured the ship.
We took the Ferry from near the Midway out to Coronada Island where we walked past the Hotel Del Coronada to the beach. Even using sunscreen, Marcia and I both ended up with sunburns. On our way back to the ferry we had Ice Cream cones.
We rode the other ferry line (route?) to the conference center. From there we walked into the Gaslight quarter up the Gharadellis to purchase chocolate (Marcia didn’t want to carry it in her suitcase from SF). We then walked back to The Olde Spaghetti Factory for supper.
We finished supper just in time to get on their LRT line back to the hotel with the fans from the Giants/Padre game. I hope San Diego put on extra trains after the game, as our train was packed and that didn’t make a dent on the crowd standing on the platform.
We toured Old Town. A large part of Old Town is now a state park set up similar to a museum.
We also visited Balbao park. In the park is the San Diego Model Railroad Museum. In the museum is a number of clubs with layouts under construction. There was 1 N scale, 2 HO, 1 O, a Lionel 3 rail club as well as a small garden layout. This is the 3rd time I’ve visited (2011, 2015, 2019), and the layouts do change as time goes on.
Back in 2011, Dan Kennedy wrote a blog post titled “A Myth about Work”
He writes “your business should be something you extract money from, not put or leave money in.”
Dan wants business owners to get to the point where you have no ecomonic need to work. He says that once you get to this point, “the work you do gets to be a lot more fun. You get to be a lot more selective. And anytime you like, you can just stop.”
He says there are a couple of steps to get there:
You have to sacrifice being an Empire Builder. Empire Builders re-invest virtually all into their businesses and extract little.
You have to determine what your enough-is-enough number is, get there, and secure it.
You have to keep from escalating lifestyle to match income.
This means you have to live as far below your means as you are able to.You can’t keep buying larger and larger houses, nor more expensive cars every couple of years. You need to take the difference between your means, and your spending, and Invest this. Dan writes “If you actually care about having all your income coming in effortlessly, it cannot come from business – it must come from investments.” He is suggesting taking the profits out of your business, and investing it to grow it further. This is just part of the actions needed to make your retirement plan a reality!
The new Manulife All-In Banking Package is designed to maximize your money. It’s a new, innovative mobile-based banking bundle that’s unlike any other banking experience in Canada.
Sign-up with one easy online application and five minutes of your time – and you’ll get an everyday banking and high-interest savings account along with a ManulifeMONEY+™ Visa Platinum card1 and travel disruption insurance.2
What makes this product special?
As an All-In Banking customer, you’ll be able to:
Get unlimited daily banking – including debit transactions, e-Transfers, and withdrawals.
Earn high interest on every dollar you save.
Have your $10 monthly fee waived when you save $100 or more each month.3
Maximize the interest you earn with Savings Sweep which automatically moves excess money from your everyday banking into your savings account each night.
Get insights on your spending habits and learn about personal finance from MAI, your new AI-powered financial assistant.
Plus… for a limited time, new customers will get a one year Amazon Prime membership and up to five-months of Amazon Audible4 just by making ten or more purchases in each of the first full two months following your Manulife All-In Banking Package opening date.5
Get started and you’ll receive our special discounted banking fee of just $8 per month. And by saving $100 each month, you’ll get free banking!
_____________________
The Fine Print
1 Subject to credit card approval.
2 Underwritten by The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company (Manulife) and First North American Insurance Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Manulife. Manulife, P.O. Box 670, Stn Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2J 4B8.
3 At the end of every month, if the balance in your High Interest Savings Account is $100 higher than the balance on the last day of the previous month, we’ll waive the monthly fee.
4 If you’re not already an Amazon Prime member and you haven’t used an Audible free trial before, you’ll be eligible to receive 5 months of Audible as part of this offer. Amazon Prime now comes with a 3-month Audible free trial. If you’ve used an Audible free trial before, you’ll be eligible to receive 2 months of Audible as part of this offer.
Two weeks ago I asked people to fill in a survey that was assigned as homework for a course I was taking. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to fill out the survey!
The results are as follows:
Age Range: 19 – 67
Total responses: 13
Total Married: 10
Total with Children: 10
Children age range: 6 months – 50* (step child)
Has a pension: 7
Has had their pension explained to them: 5
Has an estate plan: 4
Has a will: 6
Has life insurance outside of employer group plan: 8
Has critical illness insurance outside of employer group plan: 3
Has disability insurance outside of employer group plan: 3
Has medical/dental insurance outside of employer group plan: 4
Has travel insurance: 2
Understands their insurance policies: 5
Believes Retirement Planning is:
of Great Importance: 4
Important: 4
of some importance: 3
of No Importance: 2
Believes Financial Planning is:
of Great Importance: 4
Important: 5
of some importance: 1
of No Importance: 3
Believes Saving is:
of Great Importance: 0
Important: 2
of some importance: 7
of No Importance: 4
Number of respondents interested in a second look: 1
Note: Two respondents contacted me and said they won’t be hitting submit. 1 said there were too many questions he didn’t want to answer and the other said the questions sent him into a rage. The purpose of the survey was 2 fold; 1 was to inform me on my potential market(s) and the other was to get people to ask themselves these questions so that they might take action. I can only hope that everyone was inspired to ensure their family and future is taken care of now before it’s too late, even if I’m not the one guiding them.
The survey below is being collected as homework for a course I am taking. Your responses will be aggregated with the responses of all other respondents to build a picture of a target market. I will also be conducting the same survey by paper forms and by phone interview if you would prefer to participate in those formats.
I thank you in advance for your participation.
In alignment with Canadian law, I will not contact you to followup with your survey responses unless you select “yes” to the question giving me permission to contact you.
If you would like me to contact you to dive deeper into the topics raised in the survey, please select yes to both the “permission to contact” question as well as the “thorough review” question at the end.
We all have a bank account. Many of us have more than 1. Savings Accounts, Chequeing accounts, High Interest Savings Accounts, etc. Each type has a different set of features, restrictions and fees.
I used to pay fees. Back when bank accounts paid interest even in the chequeing accounts. Yes, that was many years ago.
But then I found a way to do my banking such that it was a very rare occasion that I pay fees (usually when I goof and not meet the requirement/restriction). I have now found an account that not only won’t charge me fees, it will also pay me an interest rate better than what I’m seeing at my normal bank for GICs.
Why does this matter? Well, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much you make. What matters is how much you keep. So if I keep an extra $15 or $20 a month by not paying fees, and it I make an extra couple dollars a month in interest, then I am $20 or $30 a month ahead. But once you start saving this money and letting compound interest come to play for 20 years, you quickly see exponential growth!
If you want to earn more interest, and pay less fees, ask me how to open your own Advantage account today. It can even be done Online in under 5 minutes! (disclosure: that link is an affiliate link meaning Manulife will compensate me for your business)
How does this work?
You’ll earn 3.25%* interest for the first six months when you open a new personal, non-registered, Canadian-dollar Advantage Account before July 15.
You can bank for free** when you keep just $1,000 in the account. Bank fees for everyday transactions will be waived with the minimum balance.
I’m happy to discuss how this will benefit you and help set you up with a new Advantage Account. Please contact me for more information or to book some time together.
Currently, only personal, non-registered, Canadian-dollar Advantage Accounts can be opened using their new online application.
All you need to do is click on the link: Apply Now
The Fine Print!
The 3.25% promotional rate is for a new personal, non-registered, Canadian-dollar Advantage Account. The promotional interest rate is made up of the regular posted annual variable interest rate of 1.50% and the variable annual promotional rate of 1.75%. Interest is calculated daily and paid monthly on net new deposits for the first 182 days (6 months) after account opening to a maximum of $500,000. Any change to the regular interest rate will result in a corresponding change to the promotional interest rate. The offer is limited to one account per client and cannot
be combined with other offers. The offer and rates are as of April 30, 2019 and subject to change without notice. See full terms and conditions and visit manulifebank.ca/rates for current rates.
**Everyday banking fees for ABM cash withdrawals, debit payments, e-transfers and bill payments are waived when the account balance is $1,000 or more. All other everyday withdrawal and deposit transactions are free at any balance. Visit manulifebank.ca for additional details.
Advantage Account is offered through Manulife Bank of Canada.
Once you fill in the form below, a representative will contact you to discuss Financial Education, your financial needs and help you with Retirement planning.
