Hypothetical Client(s):
Ages:
Primary Goals:
Trading the City for the Country Golf Course
Diane and Lance's Move to the Interior
If you've ever sat in Lower Mainland traffic dreaming about a quieter life, you're in good company. Diane and Lance spent decades building one — successful government careers, a home in the Vancouver area, and all the roots that come with staying in one place long enough to call it home. But at a certain point, they started asking themselves a question a lot of us eventually ask: does "home" have to mean this pace forever?
Where We Started
We met Diane and Lance several years ago. They'd worked hard — careers with the government, decades of steady saving into their RSPs — and they'd done it well. Our job wasn't to fix anything. It was to help them figure out what came next.
The Move
What came next was the interior. Diane and Lance had spent enough winters commuting and enough weekends wishing for more time outdoors that the decision, once they let themselves make it, wasn't a hard one. They sold their Vancouver-area home, bought a smaller place up in the interior, and set themselves up for a life with more golf, more fresh air, and a lot less rushing around.
The Plan We Built
Selling a Lower Mainland home and buying a smaller one in the interior usually leaves a gap left over — and that gap became the interesting part of the plan. Rather than let that extra equity sit idle, we invested it to generate a regular income stream, one designed to carry Diane and Lance comfortably through the years before they needed to trigger their RRIFs. It meant the RSPs they'd spent a career building could keep growing a little longer, doing their job at the right time instead of the first available one.
At the same time, we made sure the paperwork caught up to the plan. Wills, beneficiaries, all of it updated to reflect what Diane and Lance actually wanted — not what a document from twenty years ago happened to say.
Where They Are Today
We still check in with Diane and Lance regularly, and the conversation is always some version of the same thing: are they taking enough income to enjoy life, without taking so much that they run their capital dry before their capital's ready to retire too. So far, the balance is holding, and so are they.
This case study is illustrative of the financial planning process and outcomes a disciplined, long-term approach can achieve. Individual results will vary. This is not intended as specific financial advice.
