Newspapers are poor sources for financial advise.

With the recent crash, newspapers dusted off the traditional horror story reporting that seniors who had foolishly put their retirement money in the market now faced financial ruin. It is not exactly a myth but it isn't the whole story either. A more complete story would report that folk frightened by what they have read in their daily paper or those who get their financial advice from the daily paper may well have invested unwisely.

Let's say you were a senior in early 2008 and you put all your retirement savings, $100,000, into the TD Monthly Income fund. It is a simple balanced fund investing primarily in Canadian stocks along with a conservative percentage devoted to bonds.

You needed that money to live in retirement and were going to remove $450 every month to balance your budget in retirement. And that money was coming out no matter what. You could not meet your expenses in retirement without it.

Unfortunately, the stock market crash of 2008 happened just days after you put all your money into the fund. Wham! And you were out tens of thousands of dollars. The daily paper told you what you already feared, "You are toast!"

Left numb by the loss you did what you always do when faced with an insurmountable problem, you did nothing. And you did the right thing. Look at the following chart.

Yes, you were able to remove $450 from your investment every month for almost a dozen years and your finances were looking quite good until covid-19 caused the market to crash. $450 a month is an annual 5.4% withdrawal rate. This is a lot more than the 4% that the newspapers often claim is your maximum rate of withdrawal.

Your goals was to live on an amount similar to what was being offered by an annuity but keeping the principal to pass on to the children. After ten years the annuity would continue to pay a weekly amount but there would be no benefit to the kids after the death of the annuitant. There were other benefits from going the mutual fund route, such as the surviving partner continues to draw the monthly income even after the death of the one whose savings was used to make the purchase.

With the market crashing, you noticed stories in the media warning retirees that they were now at risk of running out of money. Post Media carried a particularly worrisome story.

The media giant reported: For example, if a 75-year-old had $500,000 and was planning to live on this cash for 10 years at a rate of $50,000 annually, a 20 per cent drop in capital would reduce that annual income by $10,000 to $40,000.

Huh? Why? What is this fellow doing with his massive stash of cash? Is it simply hidden under his mattress? Suspicious, you crunched the numbers. You discovered that if the fellow put $500,000 in the TD Monthly Income fund just days before the historic  market crash of 2008 and then immediately started removing $50,000 annually, after 12 years of withdrawals he would have something like $67,556.25 today.

When the blue line, the TD Monthly Income line, ends there is still a balance of $67,556.25 remaining.

It must be said that some newspaper articles are better than other. The London Free Press carried an article that had some good advice. It was a little self serving as it was written by a financial advisor and spoke very highly of using these whiz kids to direct your investments. https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/thompson-dont-panic-and-overcome-covid-19-market-fears/wcm/f88ab65d-18a2-4960-9443-05ad73014278/

The biggest problem with newspapers is the editors may have no opinion on the subject and so publish what they feel are balanced articles but, in fact, they are running bunkum and truth and giving both the same weight. If the editors were more knowledgable, I'm sure they would make different decisions.