Lyn you’ve been given a lot of great advice and I’m sure you will get lots more.
I just want to have you take a good look at Canada’s healthcare system and how it will affect you.
I am not a doctor so have no real experience on that end but over the years quite a few of my doctors have retired in one way or another at about fifty. A couple of them have died (top of their field, not enough doctors, no time to even sleep), one has had to sell his practice and uproot his family to move back to Australia due to ailing parents, a couple have gotten too sick to practice anymore and not been able to sell their practice, etc. A few of the women have also decided to work only a few days a week after starting their family.
The health care system varies from province to province but in mine now it doesn’t work for either the doctors or the patients very well all because some head honcho in some office decided to run things differently.
The fees doctors are able to charge for certain procedures are ridiculously low. As a patient things are much more expensive too. If seeing a doctor, ,getting a cat scan or other test in a hospital the wait times are pathetic for the most part thus upping the horrendous parking fees. If tests/imaging are done outside the hospital the locations now have horrid parking fees and it is not unusual to have to pay for supplies that are used in the test that are not covered by your supplemental insurance. Out of pocket medical devices are very expensive, justly so, but the warrantee for the device and the years you have to wait to buy a new device by your supplemental insurance plan are off by two years, the warrantee being the one that ends earlier. Shelling out many thousands of dollars every five years increases your cost of living substantially over the years. Never mind the cost of all the things you need to use this device which are not covered by insurance.
This sounds very negative but in reality it is not. I adore my docs and we are very lucky to have such a vast array of physicians with such tremendous knowledge and astounding ways technology is able to save lives. The little blips in the system are probably why we lose so many doctors and the wait times are increasing for all health care needs.
So in conclusion, kudos to you for formulating a great plan but plan perhaps with an earlier retirement cut off date in mind and a more expensive monthly outlay than you planned for. You will be effected by this both ways, in your salary and as a patient.
