Enhanced Workshop Series
Get ready for our fall financial wellness workshops! These sessions, led by Stephanie Holmes-Winton, are designed to cover a range of essential financial topics, suitable for members at any stage of life. Whether you’re just starting out or nearing retirement, these one-and-a-half to two-hour online workshops via Zoom offer valuable insights into managing your finances effectively. Here are the topics we’re exploring this fall!
- Renewing vs, Refinancing (120 min)
- Financial Behaviour (90 min)
- Retirement Readiness (120 min)
- Kids & Money Kit (90 min)
- Funding Short-Term Goals (60 min)
These sessions will be presented live (virtually), and you can attend from anywhere, on almost any device.
Can’t make it live? No problem, you’ll receive access to these topics on demand and they will be made available on Winton Learn.
Looking for the recordings? Follow this link here.
Refinancing vs. Renewing – When should you make changes to your debt? (120 min)
October 22nd @ 10am
This session is focused on the various ways you could manage your debt throughout your life. We’ll cover indicators that refinancing may make sense for you, and how to negotiate debts that renew. We’ll also work through a few case studies of refinancing and renewing scenarios. The workshop element of this session includes an exercise that will help you work through your own scenario to explore your new knowledge on your own finances.
Join us to learn:
- When to evaluate your debt and consider refinancing
- Risks of frequent refinancing
- How to estimate the before and after costs of refinancing
- Negotiating strategies for debt renewals
- How to review renewal options
- When to consider moving debt at renewal
Financial Behaviour – How to get out of your own way to get more life from your money (90 min)
October 29th @ 10am
In this session, we’ll cover some of the most common behavioural tendencies that come with the most severe financial consequences, as well as some little ones that seem innocent but add up over time. We’ll explore strategies that can either help you use a behaviour to your advantage, or design strategies to avoid engaging that behaviour. The workshop exercise for this session will help you make a plan to manage the behaviour that costs you the most.
Join us to learn:
- How some of our financial instincts are costing us a fortune
- Ways to identify risks related to common financial behaviour tendencies
- Why we behave the way we do with money
- Which behaviours are worth harnessing and which ones to protect yourself from
Retirement Readiness – How will you know when it’s time? (120 min)
November 5th @ 10am
Knowing when it’s time to retire can be tricky. There are several parameters that can help you be sure you’re ready to retire. Discovering you’re not exactly ready can help you take advantage of programs that may still let you cut back your working hours, but keep building up your pension, for example. We’ll explore all the things that impact retirement finances, like sources of income, current or future debt, and major and regular expenses. We’ll also go over factors that impact the assets you may want to leave to family or others in your estate. The exercise for this workshop module takes you through a retirement readiness assessment tool, and how to interpret the results.
Join us to learn:
- Which criteria indicate you’re retirement ready
- How to project retirement needs
- How to avoid retirement surprises
- How to get your financial ducks in a row
- The impact of the timing of your retirement in a calendar year
- How to explore semi-retirement
Kids & Money Kit – All you need to ensure you’ve done your part to teach your children about money (90 min)
November 12th @ 10am
There are many lobbyists working to make sure kids learn about money in school. But no matter how integrated money education becomes, what your kids see at home will have a much bigger influence on their future financial behaviour. Financial habits are rooted in our early life experiences. In this session, we’ll go through various strategies to transform your day-to-day financial activities into teachable moments. The workshop element of this session will include tools you can use with your family to help teach kids about making healthy financial decisions. One of the best things you can do to help your kids prepare for a financially healthy life is to take good care of your own money.
Join us to learn:
- What financial information your kids really need to learn from you
- How to model healthy financial behaviour
- Age-appropriate financial discussions
- Financial firsts that should always involve a parent
Funding Short-term Goals – Affording the lifestyle you want with the money you have (60 min)
November 19th @ 10am
One of the most common financial behaviours we’ll explore in session 10 is present bias. Present bias is the reason we struggle to save when there are so many tempting things we could spend money on now. Your greatest chance to use this tendency to your advantage is to always be saving for a short-term goal. Having something that you really want that you can save for over the next 6-18 months is motivating, and helps you keep your finances in check. This workshop module includes a goal-setting exercise that can be used every time you’re ready to set a new short-term goal.
Join us to learn:
- How to set short-term financial goals on your own, as a couple, or family
- Strategies to help fund short-term goals
- How to create a backup plan to protect your goals
- How to create a short-term goal parking lot, so you’re always ready to think about what’s next
- Why recording and then celebrating goals is so important