Yep! The government of Canada actually just bumped it up this year to 18 months of paid parental leave! The net overall pay ends up being the same as the 12 month option but you can now choose to be off for up to 18 months now if you’d like. That’s what Nic ended up doing. And I plan to do that with hopeful babes 2 to extend our employer paid benefits for our first 18 months once we FIRE. The health alone is why we are planning to stay in Canada long term vs heading back down to the states.

Haha yes we are VERY fiscally conservative, even more conservative than ERN who seems to be the most conservative FIRE blogger out there that we know of 😂 Ah I hadn’t thought of the GST debate cheque’s, that’s true too! More fuel for our FIRE bucket. The goal is to live off the sub 2% dividends from VTSAX 😁

Don’t forget that the Canada Govt also provides 52 weeks of paid maternity leave on top of giving the child care payment down the road along with the free healthcare. I can not fathom living within the US health system knowing what I know from all the FIRE blogs and how it alone is one of the biggest things holding people back from leaving work, the loss of health protection.

Totally agree! The Canadian Child Tax Benefit is AMAZING!!! Wow a family of 5 about to retire early, very impressive!!!

You are correct! Index funds, like individual stocks, provide a dividend as well as the share value. Index funds typically have lower dividends (sub 2%). So in our ideal world we will withdraw the dividend with out having to sell the shares and let the value of all of those in our accounts continue to rise over the years. This would only work if our withdrawal rate matched the dividend. If we are in need of more money than what the dividend is providing, then we would sell some of the shares (how much depends on what the shares as valued at). The thought is that the shares should grow about 7%/year so you can withdraw 4% of the shares, account for 3% for inflation, and then you’re back at your starting point to allow the 7% growth to happen again. Of course there is no guarantee to 7% annual growth which is why sequence of returns risk is very scary. Our back up plan is if the market is in a downturn when we FIRE we will find some part time job bringing in ~$25k/year so we don’t need to withdraw then. Then once the market rebounds back to our FIRE number we should be entering a bull market and we’d be more comfortable to sell shares.