7 Tips On Giving Notice Of Retirement That Save Thousands

I’ve vested and stayed four years so when I retire, I get 💯 percent

I am not giving any notice. One day I will walk in and say I am leaving.

promo sm 😝

If you have a DB pension, check the details for how length of service is calculated. In my case, retiring on the 1st of the month gave me credit for that entire month and increased the commuted value by nearly $10k.

I had a discussion with my boss earlier this year to let him know that my plan was to retire this year but I did not set a date on it. This way the company was aware of my plans and they could proceed as they best saw fit. I submitted my official notice of retirement to both my boss and HR on May 29/23 disclosing my final day as Jul 4/23. I decided that I would not make it official months in advance as I did not see how that would be to my benefit. I've got a week to go and it has gone as smooth as I could have hoped for.

I would be careful about a too early retirement notice, especially if nothing is in your contract like it is common in the US. Once the company has found the replacement, they might ask you to leave quickly and not let you finish your "6 month of early notice". Before giving your retirement notice, be prepare to leave quickly if requested. Do not assume a company will always be grateful to you for giving an early notice. You might discover that you are not as irreplaceable as you thought!

I retired at age 35 due to paying too much income tax. Thanks to Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke I paid a lot less tax thanks to their Satanic zero interest rate policy.

Hi Adam, great video, you always generate good quality content.

I'm just wondering about giving more than a few month's notice, however.

In my personal experience, and the experience of those around me who have done this sort of thing, in every case - 100% - the company in question always delayed and delayed and delayed the process for onboarding/training the replacement. Then, at the very last minute, like within a week of the employee's last day, the company comes to the soon-to-be- retired worker and says, "You've really left is in a bind here. Can't you stay on for another few months?" And when the employee says, "Uh, no. I gave you X month's notice," generally the management gets in a snit and makes life difficult, sometimes even delaying or shortchanging final paycheques.


Again, to be clear, every single person I know of who has given extra notice has run into this problem.

It is not up to the employee to manage the company's HR or recruitment systems. (HR is wholly dysfunctional; the entire HR industry is a mess, but perhaps that's another discussion for another time.)

If an employee is approaching retirement, there really isn't any benefit to them to give the company extra notice. It's never appreciated. Let's put it this way: if an organization wanted to terminate an employee, they'd do so without giving extra notice. So why should an employee give extra notice to such an organization?

Are you Canadian?

I think people have an overinflated sense of self importance when it comes to their job. The truth is you will be replaced in 5 seconds and forgotten about. I think 99% of us work for companies who have only ever looked at or cared about their bottom line - not the humans who do the work for them. So don't cry for them when you decide to say BYE-BYE! I plan on giving 2 weeks and that's it. I will of course get all my info and ducks in a row before I give notice - but the company can kiss my arse.

Another great video! I’d just like to warn people to get their pension information (if they have one) and are retiring early in writing. I had a problem with what they thought I should be receiving because of a computer glitch. I had previous documentation to prove my calculations.

While your suggestion of giving abundant notice is commendable it also can be one of the worst financial decisions you make. Example .. if you hope/plan to retire Nov 1 and give you notice 3 months earlier (Aug 1) and then get in to a car accident (for example) Sept 1 that is going to require months, or a lifetime, of assistance/physio then you’ve basically kindly given your employer notice to make their lives easier to replace you (although the accident changed that anyway) but you also lose access (as of Nov 1) to sick time, medical benefits and maybe even disability pay that is far superior to EI, that you would have still had if you had not given early notice. Is it likely, no, but is it possible yes. I am surrounded by coworkers looking out for #1 so to not look out for yourself at a time when money is really important is just stupid. I’ve given every indication that i hope to retire but i have to,d them that i will retain my right to not give early notice.

I handed my notice and then went sick had holidays and more sick and never showed up again.

I think you advocate for much more loyalty to an employer than many deserve. My former employer gave me zero notice of my "retirement" at age 54, with no option of when to receive my accumulated time off and minimal payment in lieu of notice. Only option was to make maximum contribution to RRSP, but it was still a big tax hit. Happily, my 3 month experiment in self-employment has lasted 12 years and now I'm going to retire for real this year.

I should’ve included this question in one of your cpp videos, so apologies for going off topic > I’m born mid year and have always felt that I would begin collecting in January; so 61.5, 62.5, 63.5... > is there a preferred month to begin cpp in terms of indexing, ympe, ampe, etc or it just doesn’t matter?

Thanks for your invaluable insight Adam!

The employer health/dental is way better than the pension health/dental.

They say do not take the dental benefit. They are correct. Put that dental amount in your own HISA account and just pay for your cleaning with that. Pension Dental benefit costs 125/month for 3 people & max payout per person is $1000 per year.

I gave over 90 days notice but that included some unused vacation time. I found my replacement who shadowed me for a few weeks which is rare. I had no love lost with my employer of 30 years but nonetheless wanted to take the high road on my way out the door.

In a hospital and the nurses who have retired said you need to give HR at least 30 days notice, not because it's polite but our HR is so incompetent that it will take them 30 days to get all your paperwork together and process it on time so you get your first pension payment on time.😆

I had accumulated a lot of professional development funds due to covid. So, I applied to go to a destination conference and used up the whole amount. A month later, I gave my notice and retired a month after that. It was worth it. Even though I should have stayed a few months longer, I wasn't going to leave that on the table too.

Those follow me plans are a joke. I was paying about 100$ a month for my plan (Sunlife Canada Post) and they wanted over 400$ a month for the same plan lmao no!

Lots of great points in this video. Thanks Adam.

I gave my retirement notice in mid-January and I retired in mid-May. I was in a situation where I could have stayed another year and perhaps have received a severance package (or maybe not) but when you've had enough, you've had enough. The company was good about it and I was able to transition my work to someone else, it all went smoothly.
I can say though that getting my DC pension funds out was more of a problem than I had anticipated. After I left I contacted the outsourced company that managed the employee DC pension funds and they had no process for people retiring of their own accord without a termination. I was in my 60s got to the end of the road and had just retired, I hadn't been downsized and they didn't know what to do with me. Apparently no one had ever made it to retirement before without being packaged out to early retirement since the DC plan was set up about 15 years earlier -- I was the one and only. A few calls back to HR at the company got this sorted out but was not something I expected.