Frederick Vettese

But sometimes you can't.

And sometimes you still have a mortgage left.

Maybe you will have sufficient sources of retirement income.

But if it means you're having to liquidate, say, a part of your RRSP, then it doesn't make any sense because of the tax impact.

Right.

So you can't just decide, I'm going to take a big chunk of my tax deferred savings and use it to pay off the mortgage, just like Fred said.

I'm not really saying that.

I'm not saying to take a big tax hit to pay off the mortgage.

Obviously, it would be much better to have a mortgage totally paid off before you retire.

And if that isn't the case, then you better make sure that if you're working with a financial advisor that they understand it's not paid off and then

Do you really have enough money to retire on?

And if you have no choice because you're already retired and it is what it is, then just make sure that you're only drawing as much income as you can actually afford to be drawing.

Taking all that into account.

You're right.

And it's great that so many people my age have been helping their kids with mortgages and so on.

And I've helped my kids to some extent as well.

But it's funny because we don't really take that into account so much in our retirement planning.

When you sit down with your advisor, you usually talk about how much money do I need in retirement, me and my wife.

And if you think about the kids, it'll be after death.

I want to leave so much to my estate and so on.