Travel Plans This Holiday Season? Read This Before You Head Out

The arrival of the holiday season signals travel.

Before you catch a flight or hit the road, especially if you are travelling outside of Canada, it’s important to understand your out-of-country plan coverage. That’s usually true, but this year the main thing for holiday travelers is to understand how their out-of-country coverage applies to COVID-19.

Make sure to keep these three points in mind before, during and after travel:

• First and most importantly, pay attention to your COVID-19 coverage and how it applies to out-of-country travel.
• For people leaving Canada, make sure to check the standard trip time limit of your contract. Plan members should check their contracts and make sure their planned trip is within these limits. Remember, there is no extension to the trip time limit. The no extension rule applies even if traveling home is restricted.
• The Canadian government currently has multiple travel advisories in place and recommends Canadians avoid all non-essential travel outside of Canada. As the response to the pandemic continues to evolve, the possibility of borders closing is very real. If that happens, you could find that coverage runs out while you’re still abroad due to the trip duration limit.

Whatever your plans for the holiday season, please remember to wear a mask, wash your hands and stay at least six feet apart. 

With the recent market volatility, it’s understandable if you’re concerned about your retirement investments.

Volatile markets can make you wonder if you’re on track to meet retirement goals. This is a good time to remind yourself that ups and downs are a normal part of the market, and review best practices to follow.

Participants shouldn’t be discouraged. They shouldn’t panic. Instead, they should be proactive! Here are some steps to take in both up and down markets:

1. Review Portfolios. You should know your investment mix and be sure they are invested in the appropriate asset classes (based on risk tolerance and time horizon to retirement). Times like these reinforce the need to diversify. (While diversification does not guarantee against loss of principal, it can help spread risk among different asset classes and market segments.)
2. Check Contribution Rates. How much you contribute each month can directly impact how much you will have at retirement. Have you done a retirement needs calculation? Do you know how much you should be contributing each month to reach your goals? Are you increasing that amount each year (or more often) based on your income and age?
3. Rebalance. This will readjust your portfolios back to their original investment strategy, attempting to "sell high and buy low." Essentially, when rebalancing there’s a tendency to sell some appreciated assets and purchase others with lower valuations. Regular rebalancing (as a rule of thumb, at least once a year) may increase the overall return of a portfolio over time.
4. Consult with Professionals. You don’t need to go it alone. As your advisor, we offer financial planning resources.

The key is to remember that staying invested in times of market turbulence can help with potential market gains. While there is never any certainty in the market, some of the sharpest historical market declines were followed by steep rebounds. History has taught us that volatility is to be expected.

The implications of surrounding the current turmoil present a good opportunity to refocus on the basics, and lock in best practices you should be following on a regular basis.