So Tina what are talking about today - About stuff you need to know - What do I need to
know it - I think we all need to know it Norm - Oh right well we will get right on that before
we do we are Tina and Norm and if you haven't subscribed we would really love you to do it,
we are going to you a rapid fire of stuff you need to know and we have come across this little by
little through our whole life so Tina lead it away - I think one of the best things we learned was
before Norm and I got married we went to visit my Grandparents and they gave us two words of advice
the first was always have one purse and the second was never go to bed angry - And they were deeply
in love they had been married a long long time and Tina's Grandmother became bedridden so her
Grandfather got into the bed next to her just like John Lennon did and that's where they stayed for
the rest of their lives in their late nineties, full of wisdom he was a self made man and
the one purse idea just having one pool of money in a marriage one account or if you have accounts,
savings account, chequing account have them all joint and the other benefit to that is in
retirement when one of you passes away there isn't a deal for the other partner to get the money and
continue living it's seamless whereas if you have separate accounts then you have to go to the bank
give them death certificates all that good stuff - So in actual fact Norm it can prove to be a huge
bonus to you when in retirement - It can and it just adds to the openness of your marriage you
have nothing to hide, or if you do you should be careful - Leading on from bank accounts,
credit cards aren't they just biggest pleasure in life and also the scourge of humanity,
they can enable so many good things but they can also trip the unsuspecting us including earlier in
our marriage into massive debt, don't carry credit card debt try and limit that so in retirement we
didn't have any credit card debt, we do not have any credit card debt that is beyond 30days so we
clear our card every month and we enjoy all those points Tina has Presidents Choice where she gets
points - Then it becomes cash back doesn't it - Free groceries the other thing we learned is
I had always had a credit card throughout my whole married life because I was a sales rep
on the road and the company required that you the gasoline petrol for your car and
expensed lunches with clients and then they would reimburse you so yes I always had a credit card
and then we goy Tina a credit card early in our marriage as an additional card holder
and what we didn't realize for all those years it didn't add anything to Tina's credit score,
only mine because in the eyes of the credit card a second cardholder is nothing - Is
invisible so it only worked for you it took us years before we found that out didn't we - But
as soon as we did we got Tina to apply for a credit card in her own name because once again
if I had passed away Tina would be left with no credit at all no credit score or minimal credit
score, it's important if there are 2 of you and only 1 is the major credit card holder the other
party should get one in their own name just so they become available to get credit incase
of an emergency - That's great advice - One that we just found out Tina is have 2 credit cards that
goes against the grain of ours so why would we have 2 credit cards - Well we just recently found
this out and we thought this is fantastic advice even for us is to get a second credit card but
only have a really low credit limit on it by that we are maybe saying 1 or 2 thousand dollars would
be a low limit because our limits are a lot higher on our other card and the reason is use it for all
your online buying like everything you order from Amazon or Walmart just use this low limit
credit card that god forbid you get hacked your exposure is not that bad - Maximum of 2 thousand
dollars - And we thought that's brilliant advice we only just found this out didn't we - But it
leaves your main credit card off the internet so you can go to hotels car rentals stores and
buy stuff in person but your online presence shouldn't have your main credit card on there,
get this card that you're only going to use online so anything you buy online so Skip The Dishes,
Dominoes Pizza, all your T.V. subscriptions just use that and so if you are hacked and there is any
problem at the bank reimbursing you the maximum you can loose is a small credit limit - Yeah we
thought that was brilliant advice - Awesome - I think another thing to Norm is yet again
another lesson we learnt if for some reason you emigrate to another country and you then have a
second passport what we are suggesting is make sure when your first passport runs out or just
before it runs out renew it at the time don't let it run out like we did, we just recently renewed
our British passports because they ran out and what a palaver it was it was so much harder wasn't
it to do it so our advice is and lots of people are doing this moving from country to country
keep that initial passport when it runs out get it renewed at the same time - That's great advice -
So then you got 2 passports - It is indeed and why do we have two passports well incase the
tax man chases me...no it isn't we pay our taxes it's just incase geopolitical things happen and
we might find ourselves needing to leave Canada who knows we don't know it's there it's a luxury
we can afford and if we never use them then thats fine by us we love living in Canada. We
downsized I think a lot of our viewers know that, we downsized radically went from being homeowners
Tina and I were homeowners when we were 20 and 18 years old we bought our first house and we decided
in retirement actually way before retirement in our middle life middle age we knew we would sell
our house and that would be our pension because we didn't have any - That was always the plan wasn't
it - It was one of the biggest pieces of advice that we would give you is if your a homeowner
and your anticipating to downsize either to a smaller home or a rental apartment
don't treat the huge amount of capital that your going to get from your home
like a lottery winnings it's so easy to think we have all this money lets go get a new car - Lets
go blow it lets get it you name it second home - Lets start traveling we will live
on a cruise ship for a year - And you could see that money melt away really fast - We have all
heard about lottery winners that get big money then in a year or two they are bankrupt please
be careful if you get a large amount of capital from your home that you manage it responsibly
because this is the last time in you life your probably get a big lump sum of money given to
you because you are no longer working so we would say don't become a lottery winner in downsizing -
I think another thing to Norm is that a lot of people might know is with a lot of the bills we
pay to do with insurances is a lot of them wether it's car or the trailer or even the insurance on
the apartment here we tend to pay a lot of those bills yearly - And why do we do that Tina - We
want to avoid those monthly charges because you might not be reading the fine print but there is
always if you opt to pay monthly they will have tagged interest on somewhere - Administration
charge - Yes fees and things like that and we looked at this a while back now and we
decided one of the best ways to do it is just pay those bills yearly and since then it's worked out
great - Also if you are going to be traveling you are not having to worry did the payment go through
this month for the car insurance, for the trailer insurance or whatever else insurance and so take
those and get rid of them and we don't have to worry about them it's all about reducing stress
in retirement, stress of doing things you don't really need to be worrying about - Ans there is
another thing to Norm remember there is a new rule just come in that said if you were to be paying
those bills now on a credit card a lot of these companies can be adding an additional I'm going to
say around 4 to 5% that's a charge if you put that monthly bill on a credit card so that's another of
those little hidden things we don't like those things so if you can pay it, pay it one go - Put
it this way 5% of your car insurance that could be dinner out one night - Absolutely it could - It's
free money so you might as well keep it Hey do you like t-shirt Tina - Oh I think that is really
nice - I haven't had one of my rock t-shirts on for sometime - No you haven't eh that's a great
one - The other thing about rock t-shirts and going to bars rockin out! It's expensive going out
we have friends and we kind of have a lunch date and we go to various places we have a Vietnamese
restaurant which is our absolute favourite but we have been trying some new places but the one thing
this couple always does and now it's rubbed off on us they don't buy alcohol at lunch time as soon as
we go into a restaurant and they say what would you like to drink they say ice water with lemon
please - So we are all on ice water with lemon it's down to a fine art now isn't it - Whereas
if you instead of having the ice water and lemon had a beer, you could be paying $8 to $10 for a
beer 6 to 8 dollars for a glass of wine and it's just not worth it so what we tend to do with that
couple is after we have had our lunch we have a good old chit chat have a 2 hour lunch in the
restaurant and then we come back to either our place or their place and we've got we have been
to the liquor store and we have some alcoholic drinks but they are only costing a couple of
dollars for a drink instead of nearly $10 - What a way to save money heh Norm - It really is one
more thing we learnt a lesson quite quickly especially as we started traveling a lot more
was we decided because we could afford it we wouldn't take our car to the airport anymore and
have you ever been to somewhere sunny got back and you have left your winter coats in the car
so now the winter coats are freezing you get back to the cheap parking lot at the airport
and they have plowed you in with snow - In fact half the time you can't see the car for the snow
that's on top of it - One time where there was a whole bunch of us and there was just one tiny
little plastic shovel - For everybody it was a nightmare - So we all ended up shovelling each
others cars out then we had to push the cars over the snow bank that was a lesson we learned
that could ruin your holiday, we take a car from our apartment we get a taxi company
and they will take us to the airport at a flat rate and they will come and pick us up as well
at a flat rate so basically we don't have to worry about the snow we get picked up at our door and
dropped off at our door - And the car is always nice and warm to get in which is great - That
was something that we decided in retirement to have a little bit of luxury -Yes - So why
don't you tell us what you have learnt over your life that you could share tips with all of us
it will be interesting to hear because we certainly don't know everything we
have only just scrapped the surface - And we often learn so much from all your comments
we learn a lot from what you put don't we - Yes you all are a marvellous great bunch of
internet friends that share great ideas with us so we do thank you for that and
we do hope that everyone is keeping well - And staying safe - And until the next time - Bye bye