Dave Chilton

And they are complex policies.

Like I've told the story before about a universal life policy that came out from one of Canada's biggest firms and two of the actuaries involved in developing the products were with me at a conference arguing about how it worked.

And I'm thinking they're actuaries that develop the product and they don't agree.

On the subtleties of how it works.

These are complicated products, but I still am in the camp that for the vast majority of Canadians who can't fully fund their RSP, their TFSA, you go those routes first and you use term insurance to get the insurance you need.

Are you still in agreement with that?

No, I agree.

Now, I do think a corporation that has excess retained earnings, for example, and they're doing it for estate planning reasons because of certain tax aspects, it can make sense.

But again, I tend to teach the under 50 crowd, the under 45 crowd even, who isn't taking full advantage of RSPs and TFSAs yet.

That's hard enough in the high-cost Canadian environment.

That's where I believe go for those fully funded accounts first, get your term insurance in place, and go from there.

Now, what about mortgage?

As you're seeing more and more retirees now still have a mortgage.

And in some instance, they have one or they have a HELOC because they board against their home equity to help their kids out with down payments.

And are you seeing that at all?

And what are your thoughts in general about that?

Yeah, you said all that very well.

You know, I'm still back where you said you used to be, and that is I don't love it, obviously.

And one of the reasons is, again...

Psychologically, the research says that people are more stressed, even less happy in retirement when they have a mortgage, when they have debt, and they still therefore have interest rate risks too.