Think of it as a discovery process. By asking the right questions, a retirement designer will help you identify what will be most important to you in retirement. For instance, is it family, health and home? What about lifestyle and how you’ll feel fulfilled? It’s an approach called Your Future by Design, and it will help guide your thinking before putting a number to anything.

There is a big difference between a retirement design and a retirement plan.

Most Canadians believe that their savings, pensions, cash and assets make up their retirement plan. Those are great building blocks, but they are not a complete design.

Think about how an interior designer would help you create a room in your home. They would probably begin by asking, “How do you imagine the room looking?” and “What do you see yourself doing in it every day?” Only after knowing these things would it make sense to start talking about the numbers.

A retirement designer helps you design your retirement in the same way by asking you to think about a vision for your future—where you want to live, who you want to spend time with, and how you want to fill your days. Once you know what matters to you most, you and your retirement designer can work on a financial plan that is based on your vision.

This approach gives you a thought-through retirement design for the next 30+ years of your life, not just some numbers on a page.

A retirement designer is a fully accredited financial planner with RBC.

But unlike most advisors at other financial institutions, a discussion with an RBC retirement designer begins about you—not just your money. They first help you clarify your priorities, and think about what role they will play in your retirement. After getting a clear vision of the future you’d like to have, your designer will work with you to create a well thought-out financial plan, not just some numbers on a page.

Anytime is a good time to think about your retirement, but talking to a retirement designer is very important 5 to 10 years before retirement. Their approach requires you to do some in-depth and specific thinking about how, where and with who you want to spend your time. And they will help you put the final touches on whatever financial plan you already have in place, to make sure you enjoy the retirement you want.

RBC has retirement designers in branches across Canada. You can even contact one right now. A retirement designer can meet with you in your home, at your office—or anyplace that’s convenient for you.