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Boomers, this is your time to get retirement right

Your Retirement Income Blueprint will keep you out of a financial mess
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easier Money A plan for retirement. Photo Submitted

Attention Baby Boomers: You're getting old!

Oh, sorry to be the one to mention it, but the oldest of you started turning 65 in 2011; the youngest hit 50 this year. A tsunami of you, okay, us, line up every day to collect a final paycheque. What happens after that?

If you were smart, you might have heeded Roy the Barber's advice in David Chilton's wildly popular The Wealthy Barber: The Common Sense Guide to Successful Financial Planning. Even if you only started following his plan in 1989, your retirement nest egg gives you hope you and the cat won't be sharing the same dinner in the coming years.

But Roy didn't tell you anything about what happens once your employment income hits zero and you begin to fund your own retirement. In fact, when you come to think about it, the entire world of financial advice — including the limits of many financial advisors' knowledge — seems to be about how to save and invest. The unstated premise is if you do those things, your retirement will... will what? Take care of itself? As if.

Enter Daryl Diamond, a retirement planning guru from Winnipeg. Daryl's been kind enough to lay it all out for you in the second edition of his book, Your Retirement Income Blueprint.

There's no folksy barber in Daryl's book. But there is solid, Canadian, step-by-step advice on how to make the most of the various income sources you may have access to in retirement. Using the analogy of a house blueprint, the author gently guides the reader through the whys and hows of constructing a solid foundation and a detailed plan for funding your retirement. The second edition is up-to-date with the current changes to the Canadian financial landscape.

For those of you who are math and tax law phobic — yes, that would be most of you — I will be honest, there is some of each in Your Retirement Income Blueprint. Not enough to be discouraging, just enough to keep you from making costly mistakes. And even that, like the rest of the book, is written with the layperson in mind.

In just over 200 pages, Daryl's guide will answer these questions you've been thinking about... or better start thinking about.

Which income streams should be accessed and in what order?

Which assets do I use first and which do I defer for later?

How can I pay less tax and preserve CPP, OAS and other government sources?

How can I protect myself from running out of assets and maybe leave something behind for the kids?

If you think it's been a long strange trip so far, the ins and outs of retirement planning will really make you think you've gone down the rabbit hole if you don't take a guide like Your Retirement Income Blueprint along to show you the way.

Your Retirement Income Blueprint is published by Milner & Associates Inc. It's available on Amazon.ca and will be in bookstores in January.