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About Vibrant Communities - All about the national movement, communities involved, partners & friends and more!
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 Vibrant Communities is a community-driven effort to reduce poverty in Canada by creating partnerships that make use of our most valuable assets – people, organizations, businesses and governments.
Vibrant Communities links communities from all across Canada, British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador, in a collective effort to test the most effective ways to reduce poverty at the grassroots level.
Vibrant Communities partners have had a significant impact. The pages within this web section link you to the current results achieved in communities across Canada. There is also access to resources and links for communities developing collaborative poverty roundtables.
Below are articles describing the efforts of Canadian cities reducing poverty. Six provinces and three territorial governments are also focusing on poverty reduction with strategies underway or being developed. This collective effort seeks to transform poverty in Canada.
Learn more about Vibrant Communities here or access our 2002-2010 evaluation here.
Two years ago, I turned age 60 and realized through my volunteer work that low-income seniors and 'near seniors' did not get good financial advice as they prepared for retirement. Over the past two years, I wrote a group of booklets called, Planning for Retirement on a Low-Income along with a few others - with much help and advice from community agencies and top financial advisors. We hope to change the course of the financial advice that goes to low income retirees.
Where did we start? We began with the fundamental assumptions about retirement planning that simply do not apply to low income retirees. For most people nearing retirement, the financial advice we get is based on two simple premises:
- That our post-retirement income will be less than our pre-retirement income; and
- That our taxable income will be lower at 65.
These premises are sound. Most of us make less in our senior years. But these assumptions, and the advice that goes with it, do not apply to low income adults entering their senior years. The reality is that most low income seniors receive higher incomes when they turn 65 and this often results in them facing higher taxes once they reach 65, not lower. It's almost as if potential low income retirees live in a different world where their situation is the polar opposite to what is faced by most retirees.
Low income retirees need very different advice than what typically comes from the mainstream. But is this advice available? The answer is largely "no". Financial institutions do not specialize in advice to low income retirees and they often don't know the right answers. This means that the wrong advice is often provided to low income retirees.
Planning for Retirement on a Low Income provides low income retirees and their advisors with the information and the tools they need to make the right decisions for their financial future. It's important that low income retirees do not leave money on the table. They need it.
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