How prepared you are to live well in retirement?

MIT AgeLab has identified three questions you should ask yourself to assess how prepared you are to live well in retirement:

1. Who will change my light bulbs?2. How will I get an ice cream cone?3. Who will I have lunch with?

What do these questions have to do with retirement planning? 

A lot more than you might think. They actually uncover important factors about aging in place, staying mobile, and maintaining a strong social network in retirement. These factors can serve as a starting point for planning a satisfying retirement.

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Bloom Burton Award honours Dr. Clarissa Desjardins, Clementia Pharmaceuticals

Bloom Burton Gala 2018, Jacoline Loewen

Recognizing entrepreneurs stirs up the economy in many ways. The reason the Bloom Burton Awards Gala 2018 worked so well is the spirit of the two leaders of the firm. - Brian Bloom and Jolyon Burton. They not only stirred up the health and pharma industry, but also put on a spectacular gala. The duo were inspiring as they talked about the nominees and their journey to success.  They also lifted the spirits of everyone with Brian's story about his choice of tuxedo for the evening, a great choice, I must add.

Getting serious, the winner was Dr. Clarissa Desjardins, Founder and CEO of Clementia Pharmaceuticals Inc., which specializes in bone disorders.

Bestowed annually, the Bloom Burton Award honours an individual scientist, inventor, executive, entrepreneur, industry leader, or policy maker who made the greatest contribution to Canada’s innovative healthcare industry in the previous year. 

Nominees are accepted from any of the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostic/imaging, research instrumentation, consumer health, services or healthcare IT sectors, and equal consideration was given to contributions across any stage of development – from discovery to commercial end markets.

There were good wishes sent from the Prime Minister of Canada, as well as the leader of Ontario and our City of Toronto. Well done, Bloom Burton, for a tremendous event.
 

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Jolyon Burton, Dr Desjardins and Brian Bloom, 2018

Craig Loewen and his UWaterloo team win James Dyson Engineering Award for Canada

Craig Loewen with /university of Waterloo tea, winners of James Dyson Award

Very proud of my son and his award by Dyson. He was interviewed by the University of Waterloo: 

A blog post, written by a visually impaired person about the challenges she faced trying to use the office’s new touch screen coffee maker, was the inspiration behind a recent Waterloo Engineering Capstone Design project. WatVision took home top honours in the national leg at this year’s James Dyson Award for its clever, yet simple engineering principles.

Developed by six mechatronics engineering students, WatVision is a system that reads out words or numbers on a device allowing visually impaired individuals to make a cup of java, select an elevator floor or perform other functions most people take for granted.

“We looked at creating braille readers at first, but decided that would be way too hard,” says Craig Loewen, a WatVision member. “When [a team member] read a blog post about an individual not being able to make coffee because she couldn’t use the touch screen, we all said that we could solve that problem.”

“In about 30 minutes, the person who was blind was able to go through a few screens on a touch screen. Another individual with low vision was able to use it instantly and really liked it,” says Loewen.

In March, WatVision captured a GM Innovation Award as well as second place in the People’s Choice Award during TronCon, an annual mechatronics engineering event that connects alumni with current students.

Read full article.

Family Offices and Wealth Management: What's driving investment trends.

Family Offices: Dave Mason, Jacoline Loewen, Ed Montero, Sarah Beven

In Calgary, the team held a series of events where they presented the proprietary research on Family Offices and Wealth Management: What's driving investment trends. Five families with wealth case studies were discussed about family businesses, and their best practices as well as stumbling blocks.  

Creating corporate governance around wealth is a simple rule to state but as they say, the devil is in the details. Yet, those families, or founders, will fail if there are no rules of the road.  If the goal is ongoing transfer of wealth to the next generation which sparks the second generation to live a happy life, there needs to be thought put into action. It does all boil down to setting up governance in order to keep running family wealth management.

Held at The Petroleum Club in Calgary offered exclusive peer network of other UBS Global Family Office clients to share knowledge and discover new business opportunities.

In addition to the proprietary research, other areas of interest to wealthy families and their wealth management are:

·         Financing and advisory solutions for real estate, art collections, aircraft, hedge fund portfolios, securities backed lending, margin capabilities and more

·         Around-the-clock direct contact with our bankers, traders, specialists and sales teams in every market, product class and currency - Fully customizable real-time reporting of holdings, balances, margin, risk profiles and tax status for assets held with UBS and elsewhere

·         Tailored client portfolios to meet specific investment objectives, along with hedge fund portfolio monitoring

·         Participation in private placement deals for qualified pre-IPO clients, anchor investments and global syndicate offerings

·         Legacy advisory services, including estate planning, a young successors program and philanthropy strategies to sustain achievements and make lasting impact through giving

·         Customized guidance from the Strategic Equity Solutions Group to optimize risk/return profiles, funding, tax and accounting treatment, capital consumption, market risk, legal treatment

·         Full range of core and advisory services from UBS Prime Brokerage for family offices to efficiently gain access to the entire firm

·         Family advisory services, including governance frameworks, governing bodies, corporate advisory, management platforms, asset holding structures and business succession plans.

To learn more about family advisory, please send a request to receive the Family Office Compass, a practical guide for families setting up and maintaining their own dedicated family office.
See my books on Amazon: Jacoline Loewen, Amazon Author's page

5 lessons can we learn from Bezos’s rise to become the richest man

Interesting to learn that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will become the world’s richest person this year, or next. After yet another fantastic report of results, and yet another boost in the company’s share price, Bezos is $5 billion away from the Microsoft founder Bill Gates and likely to overtake him soon.

From my view, I remember when Amazon was just starting and seemed an interesting but not a sure thing on the stock market. I sold my Amazon for AOL back in 1999. I was wrong! 

To learn that Bezos is now passing Bill Gates means that there are lessons to learn and Bezos shares his views. I am interested in how the title of richest person (that is tracked and legitimate) sets a role model for entrepreneurs and business leaders around the world.

After all, if making more money than anyone else doesn’t tell you they are doing something right, it is hard to know what might. 

So what lessons can we learn from Bezos’s rise to the top of the pile? In brief: That you should 

1. Think big, 
2. Innovate furiously, 
3. Ignore failures, 
4. Forget about obsessing over profits, and 
5. Avoid major acquisitions. 

Those are 5 pretty good guidelines for any business heading into the 2020s. 

In the past five years, Amazon’s share price has more than quadrupled, rising from US$220 to more than $US900 as the company powers into new industries and markets. He has already overtaken Warren Buffett and Amancio Ortega, the Spanish founder of Zara owner Inditex, to become the world’s second richest. 

Read the article HERE

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Jacoline Loewen, MBA, ICD.D, is a best selling author and expert in Wealth Management. She is Canada’s leading wealth, legacy, founder and family business finance expert. Ms. Loewen's clients are entrepreneurs who transition from focus on business to managing their money. She helps overcome common wealth creation issues while optimizing investments in order to manage and nurture significant wealth with confidence.