Host: Renee Sylvestre-Williams is a financial journalist and author of 'The Singles Tax: No Nonsense Financial Advice for Solo Earners', and she joins me in studio. How are you doing?

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: I'm great.

Host: How are you?

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: I'm doing well.

Host: All right. Your book offers financial advice specifically for Canadians living alone. Why is it needed?

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: Well, the thing is, I started my newsletter five years ago because I had my own questions. In the midst of Covid, I had time. Yeah, we all had time. We weren't allowed out of our house. I was freelancing full time, so clearly money was top of my mind and I had a whole bunch of questions. Could I afford to retire? What's going on? As somebody who works in journalism and communications and has done contracts and gig work, I had what I described as a whole bunch of puzzle pieces, but no idea what the picture was like.

Host: Okay, what are we talking about?

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: We're talking about having an RSP, a TFSA. I even had a LIRA from a contract I did over a decade ago, but there was no cohesiveness to it. Because I had time, I thought, okay, I'm single. How much do I have to save if I want to retire? What happens when I get older and my health may not be great? I started pitching stories; some landed, some didn't. But I realized there's a wealth of information here. I couldn't find much online at the time. So I started the newsletter, and five years later, there's the book. Going back to your point about giving advice, I've noticed that for those five years, not many people were talking about being single and how much it costs. But now, in the last two years, this might be my algorithm, but I'm also seeing it in the media. There's much more conversation about how much it costs to be single.

Host: What are they saying? What specifically costs more?

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: Oh, well, housing affordability. Housing affordability is the big topic everywhere in any major city across the globe, right? Yes, you can live with roommates, but if you don't want to, you're shouldering rent, you're shouldering mortgage costs. There's no rental protection in Ontario after, I want to say, November 18th or 15th, 2018. So it's really difficult to plan your spending when you don't know how much your rent is going to go up year to year, especially if your salary doesn't go up by the same amount.

Host: I want to pull up some data. This is information from Erin Kelly of Advanced Symbolics. She had her AI pollster, Polly, do some research on this topic, and she found that 59% say housing is the highest cost. No surprise there. Then taxes at 24%, food expenses next at 13%, leisure at 3%, and transportation at 1.5%. Does this surprise you?

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: It does not. The housing thing, as we just talked about, that does not surprise me. The cost of a one-bedroom is now ballpark between 18 and 22, depending on where you go. Obviously Vancouver and Toronto are the most expensive. Food costs are predicted to go up another 5 to 6% this year, right? And it costs a lot to eat relatively healthy. Especially now that a lot of places are not bringing in food from the US because of the ongoing boycott. So you're looking further abroad, and then there are transportation costs. We know what's happening right now in the Middle East, and gas prices have already started going up. That's correct. Absolutely. So none of that research surprises me.

Host: I'm curious. You know, there are going to be some people when we talk about the cost of what it is to be a single person, whether it's by choice or not circumstances. Of course, if you are widowed or divorced, all that. Some people say that being single is a choice. And so with that, perhaps it does come with a premium. What do you say to that?

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: Yeah, but also being partnered up is also a choice. I mean, there's choices around the way, but I will push back on being single as being a choice because for some people it isn't. We don't know what happens in a person's life to make them decide to be single, right? We don't know. And I would not I would never want to speculate on that, because we don't know what's happened in a person's life from childhood up. Maybe they've gone through a bad divorce. Maybe they were widowed. Maybe it was something terrible. But the thing is, is you shouldn't be financially penalized for making a decision, right? Like there was a RBC study that found that single people tend to be about 66% more rent wise, because you're not splitting those hard costs. So I would push back on that.

Host: Well, let's go back to that. The data that Erin Kelly had pulled out their taxation. Why is it a sticking point for singles?

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: I think as you get older and you're planning for retirement, and a lot of this has to do sort of post-retirement, there's income splitting, right? Which the higher earning spouse or partner can, you can split your income, which theoretically drops you down into different tax bracket. A single person, especially somebody a higher a higher earning single person doesn't have that option. And even if they maximize all their tax deductions, they still don't get that advantage right, because they are the economic household unit. Even if they live with a sibling, they're still not considered the same economic household unit as somebody whose common law or somebody who's married.

Host: Can we do a little history lesson a little bit? Because in your book you talk about sort of income tax. If we go back to the First World War, the perception in the idea of income tax was actually geared perhaps more to single people.

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: The individual.

Host: The individual, not.

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: So much.

Host: Yeah. So when they were looking at putting, putting together the Income Tax Act, which is what we have, they were looking at it on an individual basis. Right. So they weren't going to specifically focus on couples. Right now we do all file our taxes individually. There are just some benefits that, you know, advantage couples. Right. So let me just make that really clear. But if I recall correctly, there was some pushback from the official opposition because at the time it was majority men who were working. Right, right. You know, women went into the workforce in World War II, and then they came out of the workforce after that. Well, majority, not everybody. And then, of course, more and more into the workforce. And keep in mind the tax the tax code does change because it was in the early 2000 where gay couples, whether they were partnered or married, were Recognized as an economic household unit as well. So there are there's possibility for change, what that looks like and how deep it will go, I don't know, but I do think there are opportunities for change there and how you redefine an economic household unit.

Host: All right. I want to go back to housing. Yes. How are singles being short changed when it comes to housing? You obviously talk about rent and rent splitting, but are there other you know, when we talk about a mortgage quite challenging just.

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: In this.

Host: ...Where we are today.

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: But yes. So if you are a high earning single, you probably have a better chance of qualifying for a down payment. But these days you need a minimum two income and possibly money from family. Family member, the bank of mom and dad, or, you know, a gift, a monetary gift to afford something, especially in the, you know, 6 or 7 major cities across the country. So financially, it can be more difficult for single person, especially somebody who may not be in the top 20 or top 15% of income earners in the country to buy a place.

Host: All right. I want to give some people some solutions, some advice. What are some top three. Give me top three tips in terms of protecting themselves. You know, in terms of savings for the future. What can someone do if they are single?

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: Well, I like to say I'm not going to tell people to budget. I feel like people already know that and they're doing it. So it feels a little condescending for me to say, go budget. You can budget your way out of a financial crisis, okay? Not a housing crisis. My bad. But kind of just know where you are financially. Like, you don't have to know what every single dollar is doing, but kind of a general picture of where you are and where you want to be. And I would say the second thing I would say is get involved in your community.

Host: What does that mean?

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: It means, I think, having a strong community around you, especially when you're single, is even more important. So I believe it was chapter 2 or 3 where I talk about having a team around you, so obviously friends and family, but also things like having a good employment lawyer. Right? There's a lot of layoffs happening right now. Having a good employment lawyer can be the difference between getting two weeks severance and 12 and 12 week severance that, I mean, that happened to me when I got laid off about a decade ago. And the third thing, and this one is, I would say, get more politically active, like support politicians that are looking or have concrete ideas about how to address housing affordability, how to make it easier to live in a city, whether as a single person or as a family. Right? Because there are just some things that cannot be solved by the individual in and of itself. It takes perhaps a whole bunch of people getting together and supporting political action.

Host: Renee, we are going to leave it there. I appreciate your time, your insights and your passion.

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: Of course.

Host: Thank you so much.