How to invest on autopilot before I'm too old to deal with it or it's left to my spouse? | Page 3 | Investing | Discussion forum

This is a classic case of supposedly knowing the objective but having a reluctance to carry through. The current situation is analogous to an active portfolio manager believing they can add alpha above and beyond a passive approach.

Sometimes an active manager does add alpha and in this case, the OP may well have done so above and beyond index ETFs (both equity and fixed income) over the past X years. Continuation of this active approach may continue to add alpha for some time, but over time diminishing mental capacity will result in more mistakes and clearly when the OP is no longer capable or has departed this world, the opportunity for gross mistakes increases. The OP will need to come to terms with this internal conflict.

I plan on continuing my diy investing and savings approach via all my various accounts until I start having mental difficulty, then just close them all and move everything to a couple of the big bank brokerages and my big bank bank accounts for my POA to easily manage. At that point I won't care that I'm making less interest income from my fixed income portion than I could be, I've seen it in my parents circle when they got really old, other things are more pressing then. Similar to what my Dad did in the sense he knew when it was time to ask me for help re their finances, tax returns, etc. It's common, pretty much everybody needs to figure this out, needs to know when it's time to get help.

If something unexpected happens to me before then my wife, despite her disinterest in money affairs, with help from one or two of our kids is quite capable of figuring out what she wants to do going forward.

I agree that what activates the POA (e.g. doctor's written assessment of incapacity) is crucial to consider and that legal advice can be very helpful for some.

I found these Ontario (POAs are a provincial thingy, Ontario has lots of good info) documents very useful:
https://www.publications.gov.on.ca/300629
https://www.publications.gov.on.ca/300635

(Note they address the issue of banks not accepting them, been asked on here a number of times in the past.)

Good idea to have a POA way before you get old, e.g. you and mate could both be incapacitated in the same accident thus a POA that's activated in that case could be very helpful.

If you have someone you trust unreservedly it makes it a lot easier, you don't have to worry about restraints on them, it's just to facilitate them acting as you. If you don't have that same level of complete trust that's when legal advice is probably more indispensable. Everybody has to assess their own situation, e.g. the availability of & level of trust in candidates, family history of mental decline, their own personality, etc and even then it's very possible issues will come up.

So far I guess I've been lucky in my POA experiences, largely due to the goodwill of all (including grantors) concerned, things progressed as well as could be expected, I was already actively involved long before the POAs were even needed to be activated. Obviously you can't always plan on that basis.

I will just reiterate that this situation of POA and dementia can be much more complicated than Bill imagines. I'm not going to get into all the details, but be forewarned. Doctors are often unwilling to get into this, even psychiatrists! And even if they do, the letter may not be acceptable to bank's lawyers. And on and on. Meanwhile the account holder loses money, but the bank could care less. I was forced to conclude that the bank actually LIKES dealing with people with dementia as they are much easier to manipulate.

Stashing POA with a lawyer may be a good idea. At least it keeps it safe.
However I have not found that the lawyer necessarily exercises any gate-keeping function.
In some cases the POA may not know which lawyer was involved, so doesn't know where to look. Person with mild to moderate dementia may remove the document from lawyer's office. And so on All kinds of crap can erupt when dementia is involved.

Bottom line: do what you can, but, ultimately, you can't control the situation when you have lost your marbles.
Consider giving some money away while you still can, but document whether it is to be considered as part of your estate gift.

Loonie, I've no doubt your experiences involved substantial discord, etc, people should be aware of pitfalls, for sure. Just also letting people know that things can go quite well too, as my experiences indicated. I found my dealings with big bank employees very agreeable, they unfailingly made things easy as possible and were sensitive and empathetic to some folks dealing with a sad time of life, while at the same time safeguarding the assets of the grantors. No lawyers involved in my cases, just family, maybe that had something to do with it, I don't know. It's why I earlier suggested best choice in my view is one trusted child, worked well for me.

In any event, my message would be people ought not to shy away from arranging for POA, all you can do is make the best of an imperfect situation but if you have a trusted person or people having a POA is usually helpful.

Will do, Loonie, the day you cease your ongoing complaints about the big banks. For now I enjoy sharing positive experiences.

There are always lawyers involved when you are dealing with a bank. You just don't meet them. When I finally got my person's TFSA released, I was explicitly told the bank's lawyers "downtown" had made this decision. (This was a TFSA that should never have been opened as the person had dementia and it exceeded their contribution limit, incurring a CRA fine that the bank did not offer to reimburse; but somebody got their sales quota up).

Thanks, Bill, for clarifying your motivation.

Maximum is 122, at least known to date.

I agree that one should plan for extreme values rather than averages. Sunlife can average because they deal with a lot of humans so will get very close to average by sampling lots of datasets. Each individual only gets one life so there is high likelihood of beating the odds.

Assuming there are no known life shortening conditions, one should pick an acceptable confidence interval and then look for age that corresponds to that. Ask yourself if you are ok with a 5% chance of outliving your money or if thats too high a likelihood of dying poor. Is it 3%? 1%? Or close to zero? In the latter case you should plan for living to 120 or so.

Or you can get an annuity.