In this episode of Your Wealth Matters, Janet Kim Singh and Maria Dawes share five practical tips to help you prepare for a successful retirement. From starting early and making the most of compounding, to choosing the right investments for your stage of life, their advice covers the essentials of long-term planning.

Key takeaways include:

• Maximize your time horizon – Start saving early, even in small amounts, and let compounding work for you.
  
  

• Invest for your stage of life – Growth-focused in early years, shifting toward stability and income later on.
  
  

• Review regularly – Life changes and market shifts mean your plan should evolve too.
  
  

• Avoid knee-jerk reactions – Stay the course and don’t chase short-term market trends.
  
  

• Ask questions – Engage with your advisor to ensure your strategy stays aligned with your goals.

Retirement success isn’t about timing the market—it’s about consistency, discipline, and staying informed. Watch the full episode to learn how these strategies can help you build lasting financial security.

Janet: Welcome to Your Wealth Matters. I'm Janet Kim Sing, and I'm joined today by my colleague, Maria Dawes. Maria, nice to see you here. Today, we're covering some tips on how to set yourself up successfully for retirement. So we're going to get right into it and start with tip number one.

Maximize Your Time Horizon

Maria: Let's just start off. The first one that we'll talk about is maximizing your time horizon. We've all heard of the concept of compounding returns, and really, what that means is you want to start as young as possible to save for retirement. There are a ton of competing priorities for each dollar. We know that. But even if you can put $25 a month, $100 a month into a retirement account when you're young—in your twenties—and then grow that over time as your income increases, that makes a huge difference over the long run because you have the luxury of compounding those returns.

Maria: So, Janet, what else is important?

Choose Investments That Match Your Stage of Life

Janet: Moving on to tip number two, and that is choosing the appropriate investments for your circumstances. Too many times, we see clients overstretching on the risk side in what should be their golden years, and this can actually backfire dramatically. Risk is a double-edged sword. As much as it can increase your ability to generate stronger returns, the same can happen on the downside.

Generally speaking, we should be looking to have a more growth-oriented portfolio, which may contain more equities in earlier years of investing. Once you are in the drawdown phase of life, and assuming that you followed Maria's tip number one—saving more in those wealth-generating years—it’s likely that your portfolio will then shift to gradually become more income-oriented, with the goal of having less volatility in those later years when there's less time to recover. That’s very generally speaking and obviously can be very different depending on a lot of factors.

So, Maria, tip number three.

Re-evaluate Your Portfolio Regularly

Maria: Tip number three might be obvious, but it's not always done regularly: reevaluating your portfolio. Life changes, your circumstances change, you go through different phases of life, and the investment markets change and opportunities change. It's really important that you sit down with an advisor, or with your partner or spouse, and talk through the important goals and objectives that we need to work through and think through when it comes to the goals in our portfolio.

Is the investment mix that we currently have, and the savings goals that we've applied, really relevant to where we are today? Having regular timelines for when you review your portfolio and your financial plan is really important. That might be six months, it might be annually—it should at least be done annually.

Avoid Knee-Jerk Reactions

Janet: Very good. Moving on to tip number four, and this is a big one: avoid knee-jerk reactions. It can really make or break your savings goals. I don't know if you're one of those people who’re logging onto your portfolio every day, and maybe you see something that's of concern. It doesn't necessarily warrant an overhaul of your entire allocation. Sometimes it can be hard to see the forest for the trees.

As distressing as it can be to see a number that's not to your liking, the first thing is to take a deep breath and then ask yourself, Is this in line with my expectations? If so, then walk away and come back another day. It's important to remember that unless your portfolio is completely risk-free, it's likely that your path is not going to be a straight line up. Blips can happen, and hopefully they're very short-term, on the longer path to growth.

We need to be able to recognize those blips versus a long-term trend. It can be tempting to chase returns—buying into inflated markets, being tempted to sell after a rough patch, especially with FOMO when we see the markets reaching new highs. Don't be tempted by the latest flavour of the month or something that may be here and gone tomorrow.

Try to stay on the planned course. Now, having said that, if your portfolio return is not shaping up in line with your expectations within that expected timeframe, and you feel you've gone off course, then our last tip is for you, Maria.

Ask Questions and Stay Informed

Maria: Our last tip is don't be afraid to ask questions. We want to serve you, we want to help. I know lots of financial advisors all have the same mindset. That's why we're in this business. Making sure that we're communicating clearly, that you are expressing your goals and expectations, and that we have a good understanding of what is supposed to be in your portfolio—what is suitable for your situation—and what the expectations would be for your experience with your portfolio.

That's all we want to communicate, and we want to have that conversation with you. So, no knee-jerk reactions doesn’t mean you don't ask, because sometimes that can help inform you and make you more comfortable with the situation, whatever it might be.

Hopefully, this helped to frame some thoughts around saving for retirement and setting yourself up for success.

Five Ways to Stay on Track for Retirement

• Maximize your time horizon – Start saving today, even in small amounts. Stay consistent and reevaluate often.
  
  

• Match investments to your stage of life – Lean into growth early on, then shift toward income and stability later.
  
  

• Reevaluate when life changes – Adjust your plan as your circumstances and goals evolve.
  
  

• Avoid knee-jerk reactions – Stick to your strategy and don’t chase short-term trends.
  
  

• Ask questions – If something feels off, speak up. Advisors are here to help.

Maria: Thanks for joining us today on another edition of Your Wealth Matters, and we'll see you next time.

Retirement planning is a long journey, and success often comes down to consistency, discipline, and avoiding common missteps. By starting early, choosing investments that match your stage of life, regularly reviewing your plan, staying calm through market ups and downs, and asking questions when you’re unsure, you can set yourself up for lasting financial security.

If you’d like to review your retirement strategy or talk through how these tips apply to your situation, the Capstone Asset Management team is here to help. Reach out for personalized guidance, and join us next time on Your Wealth Matters as we continue to share insights to keep you on track toward your goals.