​Retirement is the ultimate time to kick up your feet, relax, and enjoy life after years of hard work. But, as with any major life transition, it's important to prepare yourself properly. You don't want to find yourself bored and restless in your golden years. So, let's dive into some tips to make sure you're fully prepared for life after retiring—the fun way!

First off, let's talk finances. While it may not be the most exciting topic, it's essential to assess your financial situation before retiring. Take stock of your sources of income, expenses, and any debts you have. Then, work with a financial planner to create a realistic budget that considers your retirement goals. With your finances in order, you can relax and enjoy life without worrying about money.

Speaking of retirement goals, it's time to get those dreams down on paper! What do you want to do in retirement? Travel the world? Start a new hobby? Volunteer for a cause close to your heart? Whatever it is, set specific goals and make a plan to achieve them. Having a plan in place will give you a sense of purpose and help you stay motivated to enjoy all that retirement has to offer.

Now that the serious stuff is out of the way, let's talk about staying active and connected. Retirement doesn't mean you have to slow down! Join a fitness group, try a new sport, or volunteer in your community. These activities will keep you engaged and connected with others, which is especially important if you're no longer working full-time. Plus, staying active is great for your physical and mental health!

Retirement is also a perfect time to explore new social circles. Join social clubs or organizations that align with your interests. You never know who you might meet or what adventures you might have! And, speaking of adventures, consider part-time work. It's an excellent way to stay engaged, earn some extra cash, and try something new.

In conclusion, retirement is a time to celebrate all your hard work and enjoy the fruits of your labor. By assessing your financial situation, setting retirement goals, staying active and connected, and considering part-time work, you can create a retirement that's fun, fulfilling, and full of joy. So, what are you waiting for? Get ready to rock retirement!

As we age, our priorities and needs change, and we deserve specialized care and attention that puts our best interests first. That's why it's crucial for seniors to work with business owners who understand our unique needs and can provide tailored services. In this blog, we'll explore why working with business owners specializing in senior needs can make all the difference.

Understanding the Complexities of Aging
Aging can bring complexities to our financial situation, such as healthcare costs, retirement planning, and estate planning. Business owners who specialize in senior needs are equipped to understand these complexities and help us make informed decisions about our financial future.

Tailored Services to Meet Unique Needs
Business owners who specialize in senior needs provide tailored services like retirement planning, tax planning, long-term care planning, and estate planning. These services are designed to help us achieve our financial goals while protecting our assets and ensuring our best interests are always top of mind.

Advocacy and Protection
Seniors can be vulnerable to financial exploitation and fraud, which is why we need advocates who can protect our interests. Business owners specializing in senior needs act as our advocates, protecting us from scams, fraudulent schemes, and other financial exploitation. They also provide education and resources to help us avoid financial scams and make informed decisions.
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Peace of Mind in Financial Planning
Working with a business owner specializing in senior needs provides us with peace of mind. We can trust that they understand our unique needs and are acting in our best interests, especially when it comes to estate planning and protecting our assets.

Community Involvement for Access to Resources
Business owners specializing in senior needs are often involved in their local communities and understand the challenges seniors face. This involvement helps us connect with resources and services that we may not have known existed, and it keeps business owners up-to-date on changes in legislation and policies that may affect our financial needs.

All of us at Seniors Professional Services are specialized in seniors services. Whether you need to downsize your home, move into a retirement facility, home care, dental work, insurance, or anything else. We have a specialist for you!

Visit THIS PAGE for a full list of services and specialists available.

If you're in need of a service that isn't mentioned in the list, please fill out this form and let us know what you're looking for. Or if you have a service to offer seniors and would like to join our team, you can contact us HERE.

In the past, health experts paid a lot of attention to heart health and its role in longer life. Aerobic fitness improves heart health, and that is still very important. But more and more research is telling us how important muscle strength is to healthy aging. We have known for a long time that stronger muscles help reduce falls and maintain physical function. Now, a research review shows that 30 to 60 minutes a week of muscle training has many other benefits. It reduces the risk of death from all causes, including cardiovascular disease, some types of cancer, and diabetes.

Why is strength training important as we age?
As we get older, there is a progressive decline in muscle mass. That leads to a loss of strength and function. The term for this is ‘sarcopenia’. Sarcopenia increases the risk of poor health outcomes, including falls, loss of independence, disability, and death from all causes.

What is the best way to increase muscle mass?
Researchers have been looking for the most effective ways to treat sarcopenia. They have found that there are two key factors:
• overall physical activity
• nutritional supplements (especially protein)

Researchers found that a well-rounded exercise program, including both strength and aerobic exercise, was the most effective intervention to treat loss of muscle mass.

Some general guidance on strength training
Develop a muscle training routine you can do two or three times a week. Exercise all the major muscle groups in both the upper and lower body. Building muscle requires a little effort. Pick a weight that you can lift, pull, or push. Do the exercise 8 to 10 times in a row. This is called repetitions. Start with doing the repetitions for each exercise (a set) once or twice. Wait a few minutes between each set of repetitions. When it starts getting easier, try more repetitions, more sets, or a heavier weight.

I have never done strength training. Where do I get help?
Join a class at your local community centre or gym or find a personal trainer who has expertise working with older adults. This is a great investment for strong muscles and good health!

This article was submitted by Ken Kuhn, Regional Mentor of the BC Association of Community Response Networks (BCCRNs).

Visit the website for more details: ​https://lowentropy.org/events/mcc-event/

This article is written by SPS Member Rebecca Awram, a mortgage advisor for Canadian Mortgage Experts, sharing her opinion from a mortgage perspective.

​So many questions coming in from my clients on this topic.  Everyone's looking for a simple answer, but it's a complicated question that requires a detailed response.  I understand you're all looking for reassurance, but to truly receive comfort, you need to understand what's going on.  So brace yourself, there's a lot to unpack here.  Read it twice :)

Prime rate is increasing, currently sitting at 3.70%.  Pre-covid in late 2019 it was at 3.95%.  So nothing too crazy yet.  What is crazy, is our rate of inflation.  We haven't seen inflation like this since the 70s and 80s, and the concern of many of my clients is that like the 80s, this inflation will lead to a housing crash.  The Canadian government was probably a bit too slow in reacting, and now is faced with the difficult task of slowing it down, even if it means putting us in a recession to do so.  They have been criticized for not reacting fast enough, created a credibility issue, and hence will probably over react in the short term.  Our government, unlike the governments of the 70s, are inflation fighters.  They will ultimately do whatever it takes to get us back to target-inflation, with the mindset that the cure is not as bad as the disease.  The economy needs to be slowed-down.  But killing inflation also kills the economy

What is Causing Inflation?  Are We Back To The 70s?
The 70s saw soviet tanks, war, energy shocks, opec pricing power and a massive spending frenzy of a rising middle class.  An era of unprecedented technological growth and people that wanted vehicles, appliances and homes to put them in.  Nobody was saving, everybody was spending and interest rates went through the roof.
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Some of these items should sound familiar. But there are some stark differences.  Our spending frenzy is winding down, as people stop buying the goods they wanted in boredom during covid (entertainment, projects, renovations, new hobbies, etc). Our employment rate is very high.  We haven't stopped saving either, Canadians currently have $300B more in their bank accounts than we did pre-covid.  Prices are continuing to rise, but it's not necessarily because of demand, it's because of constrained SUPPLY.  There is an energy crisis evolving, a shortage of access to fuel, as countries around the world pull away from Russian oil.  The war itself is pushing upwards on commodity prices.  China has pretty much been closed for business all year, with a strict no-covid lockdown policy so their cheap goods and anything that needs a chip aren't making it to global markets.  Supply chains around the world have been disrupted and are just starting to amend.  All of these things lead to higher prices.  Also people and businesses, sensing scarcity, compete to purchase more and hence drive up pricing even further.  The system feeds on itself.

Will Increasing Rates Stop Inflation?
Probably not.  Because low rates (demand) aren't what's driving it up.  It's a supply-side driven inflation.  But rising rates and a frightened populace that stops buying and spending, could afford us the time we need for some (not all) of these things to sort themselves out by winter 2022/23.

1. ENERGY SHOCK - always brings inflation.  However, this time around, our dependency on oil is lower than it was during the 70s.  Because of climate change, but also because of efficiency and usage.   We are close to peak inflation, in relation to energy.

2. SUPPLY CHAIN - that's about 60% of inflationary pressures right now.  The year 2021 had four years of average-consumption-of-goods crammed into one year.  Demand shock with diminished supply.  All related to covid, which about a year from now, should be irrelevant.  Taking interest rates to the sky won't solve supply chain disruptions.

3. RENT - will continue to rise.  It didn't go up as quickly as house prices during the pandemic, but during covid homebuyers got the benefit of a recession without the downside, renters did not.  This has never happened before.  Rent will continue to rise because of huge demand and lack of supply.

​4. LABOUR MARKET - we simply cannot get enough people; wages are rising in low paid occupations, especially among job switchers.   New immigrants traditionally took up a lot of the low paying jobs, but we now have highly skilled and more educated immigrants, so there's been a significant change in the structure.  Young adults also traditionally fill a lot of low wage / labour positions, but during covid remote-work created more options and a huge chunk have moved to higher paying occupations.

Will Our Housing Market Crash?
The housing market is slowing.  THIS IS A GOOD THING.  It is a welcome adjustment, we shot way too high in late 2021 and early 2022 and a course correction is needed. Everyone benefits in a balanced market, instead of just one side over another.  And it will continue to soften during 2022 because the government is raising rates and frantically trying to slow us all down, so that some of the things that are REALLY causing inflation (mentioned above) have time to correct.  The long term trajectory for our market is still high, because the fundamentals remain the same.  Immigrants, and demand, are ever-present.  Supply is not.  Cost of construction is rising (because of inflation on hard costs, but more importantly also the cost of labour) and developers are seeing their margins shrink.  Many lower mainland projects are getting shelved right now, as developers want more certainty in expense and would rather start these projects when the inflationary pressures have subsided and costs are more predictable.  So when we do wake back up and demand returns, supply will be even lower.  Study after study says we have an existing supply problem against a backdrop of an increasing population.

Defaults, foreclosures and a housing crash?  People rarely lose their homes because of rising rates, they lose their homes because of death, divorce and job loss.  The metric you want to watch, if you're concerned about a housing crash, is unemployment.  And that is at an all time low.  Not a recent low,  an ALL TIME RECORD  low.

Additionally, people aren't as over-extended as the media would have you believe from their click-bait headlines.  All those low rate mortgages taken out during covid had to qualify at 5.25%. And average mortgage sizes did not increase at the same increment as housing prices.  What increased at the same pace was down payments.  First time buyers were largely sidelined, but existing homebuyers moved up and moved out to secondary properties, with big fat down  payments from their sale or refinance.

When Will Rates Stop Going UP?
It is much easier to predict long term outcomes than short term ones.  2022 is definitely a transition year, as we move from a pandemic to an endemic.  Things will evolve.  The effectiveness of monetary policy remains to be seen, but eventually the war will end, supply chains will improve, fuel costs will lower and china will open back up for business.  These things do not have an end-date that we can mark on the calendar quite yet, but they will happen.  And when they do, our rates will be too high to stimulate economic growth and will come back down.  They won't come down to the artificially extreme low rates that we've had during covid, but I predict they will overshoot in the short term and then come down in 2023 to something that balances inflation with economic growth.  It's a cycle that will play-out quite predictably, but when you're in it, it's hard to step back and see it from a distance.

Relax, turn off the news, put your phone down and go for a walk.   It's all going to be okay.

​On behalf of all of us at the Alzheimer Society of B.C., we hope that all is well and you’re enjoying your spring. A huge thank you to all of you who participated in the IG Wealth Management Walk for Alzheimer's on Sunday! You’re all making a real difference in the lives of people affected by dementia. 

Written by Rebecca Awram
Mortgage Broker at Seniors' Lending Centre