I have been part of a golf pool for the last few years. This year I decided to overhaul the spreadsheet that we use to keep track of the scores. It is a pick one out of a block of players format with the winners based on the money totals from each weekend event from the PGA regular season.

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Pension Planning

Unlike other felines this old cat has only one life. I am trying to decide what my retirement is going to look like and do a little bit of planning for that day. A number of my friends have opted to take their CPP (Canada Pension Plan) early. In Canada you have the option of taking CPP as early as the age of 60 or delaying it past the normal age 65 to as late as age 70. If you take it early it is reduced by a certain percentage for each month or if you delay it it is increased by a certain percentage for each month it is delayed. In addition these percentages are being changed each year for the next few years. see… http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/services/pensions/cpp/publications/changes.shtml . The net effect of this is if you take it early you are money ahead for a period of time (you are getting a pension, abet at a lower rate than if you waited) but at some point you break even and then after that you have left money on the table. This crossover point seems to happen at about age 75 to 77 (assuming taking it at 60) for most people. Conversely, if you delay your CPP you don’t get to collect it until later but the amount is more. This crossover where you are money ahead seems to happen at about age 80 (assuming you delayed until 70). It would be an easy question if we lived forever. There is also a cap ($1012.50 in 2013) to the total amount of CPP that you can collect that is increased or decreased by that same formula.

Continue reading “CPP and Survivors Benefit”

Life and general interest (well I think it’s interesting).

I did some research on Canada Pension Plan and the Survivors Benefit – The results are here along with a spreadsheet that may help you with your planning. See the CPP and Survivors Benefit page.

On a lighter note I’ve had almost as much fun building tools to track sports pools (hockey and golf) over the years as I have had participating in them. I think I’m better at building spreadsheets than I am at picking winning teams. The spreadsheet that we use for our 2015 PGA golf pool is on the Golf Pools page.

1. I am not a physicist, just a citizen scientist. I have read (mostly in popular publications like Scientific American and Sky and Telescope) about the theories of the origins of our universe for the last 40 years. A lot has happened, more will.
2. I do not understand quantum mechanics or my wife though I believe that entanglement plays a part in both.
3. In an infinite universe, anything…

Welcome to WiseOldCat.com

I had contact with my first computer in the the early 80’s at the local Radio Shack store. The first computer I owned was a Timex Sinclair ZX81 built from a kit. With 8k of ROM, 1k of RAM and a 2MHz processor it was the first and last computer I’ve really understood. (By that I mean reading and mostly understanding the assembly code for the ROM.) Computers have gotten much more complex since then but my fascination with them remains.

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