The book would never have been written if I didn’t happen to attend a presentation in the summer of 2016 given by two highly respected Morneau Shepell actuaries — Nigel Branker and Emily Tryssenaar. They alerted me to the fact that maximizing income from savings while minimizing risk was far from simple.
At the time I wrote the first edition in 2017, I was still employed by Morneau Shepell. The firm provided me with considerable support and encouragement, and in particular I am grateful to Stephen Liptrap, president and CEO of Morneau Shepell, who freed up my time and gave me the resources I needed to write the book. The Morneau Shepell Retirement Solutions practice ran the Monte Carlo simulations that underlie much of the hard analysis contained in the book.
Michelle Massie, my wife, kindly put up with me during the many months when I was preoccupied with the writing of the book and again when I revised it to produce this second edition.
My investment advisor, Franco Barbiero of RBC Wealth Management, has been supportive in many ways, including offering me RBC’s research capabilities as well as his home laptop when I forgot mine in California!
Tess Francis of CIBC Financial Planning provided me with a great deal of useful information to improve on the RRIF summary that I had in the first edition.
Malcolm Hamilton, Canada’s pension guru for the past 30 years, was generous with his time in helping to frame the basic arguments and acting as a sounding board in the early stages of the writing process.
Ed Caffyn used the skills that he cultivated over a brilliant career in advertising to provide many ideas for the redesign of the cover of the book. ECW Press was responsible for the final cover design and did an admirable job.
Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, director of financial security research at Ryerson University’s National Institute on Ageing, was helpful in identifying relevant academic papers and providing feedback in other ways.
Christopher Cottier, an investment adviser in Vancouver also known as “Eagle Eyes,” provided a very useful technical edit of the book. Other people who provided input were sons Troy and Gregory, Toronto financial planner Rona Birenbaum, and my good friend and former colleague Michele Kumara.
Finally, I want to thank the team at ECW Press, Jennifer Smith in particular, for taking me under their wing and making this second edition happen.