Paul Martin Commentary
We’ve come a long way from Freedom 55.
For those unfamiliar with that concept, it was an insurance company advertising slogan from nearly 40 years ago that teased boomers with the prospect of saving effectively and retiring earlier than the standard age 65.
Now, fast forward to 2026 and it turns out many of those same boomers are actually still working, many into their 70s.
A survey by BMO Bank of Montreal on retirement plans determined that the average Canadian believes you’d need $1.7 million to retire these days. Here in Saskatchewan, it was much more modest at $1.2 million, fully a million dollars less that what someone in BC thinks they’d need.
A third of Canadians also believe they won’t get there. That has pushed the prospect of working past age 65 to the forefront with a quarter of Boomers surveyed saying they intend to never retire. One-in-five Gen X’ers and Millennials say the same thing.
Only 20-percent of Canadians are setting aside more than 10-percent of their annual income for retirement and ten-percent put away less than $100 a month.
