Tag Archives: unretirement

“Unretirement” — more than one in four near-retirees plan to work in Retirement to make ends meet

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My latest MoneySense Retired Money column has just been published. You can find it by clicking on the highlighted text here: Why “unretirement” may be the fate of so many Canadians.

Even before the Tariffs threats emerged under Trump 2.0, Canadian seniors were starting to find the economic uncertainty and rising living costs to be unmanageable. No surprise then that many seniors approaching Retirement Age are delaying their exit from the workforce.

According to a report by HealthCare of Ontario Pension Plan, 28% of unretired Canadians aged 55-64 say they expect to continue working in retirement to support themselves financially.  Here’s a screenshot from the HOOPP survey:

 

The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) commissioned Abacus Data to conduct its sixth annual Canadian Retirement Survey in the spring of 2024.  The latest survey finds “persistent high interest rates and a rising cost of living continue to have a significant negative impact on Canadians’ ability to save and manage the cost of daily life, threatening their retirement preparedness.” While all Canadians are struggling, “women and those closest to retirement are especially hard hit with lower savings and higher levels of financial stress.”

While most Canadians are struggling to save amidst a high cost of living, HOOPP finds women are particularly affected. Half (49%) of all Canadian women have less than $5,000 in savings and almost a third (28%) have no savings (compared to 33% and 17% of men, respectively), similar to the 2023 results

 

The MoneySense column also looks at more recent Retirement surveys that also reveal anxiety about rising costs of living. One is from Bloom Finance Co. Ltd., conducted by founder Ben McCabe after Trump’s Tariffs started to kick in this year.

A Bloom study conducted with Angus Reid found 46% of Canadians thinking of working part-time in Retirement. That’s in line with a Fidelity survey in 2024 that found half of Canadians plan to delay Retirement. According to the Bloom Report [in March 2024], 67% of Canadian homeowners over 55 were concerned their savings would not sustain their quality of life through retirement. Only 29% considered downsizing or alternative living situations to access their home equity earlier than expected. 59% of the same cohort agreed accessing micro-amounts of their home’s equity would help maintain their desired living standard. Continue Reading…

“Unretirement” and why it’s not selfish to be selfish

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“Unretired” novelist and blogger Joyce Wayne

By Yvonne Ziomecki, HomEquity Bank

Over the last few years, we have seen a growing trend among older Canadians: what we call “unretirement.”

This is where some Canadians take action on long-held dreams once they settle into their retirement and start to consider activities and interests for added personal fulfilment. They’re increasingly seizing the opportunities that retirement presents, fulfilling personal passion projects, which, up until now, they never had the opportunity to prioritize.

One particular obstacle seems to hold Canadians back from achieving their retirement dreams: the guilt of feeling selfish if they actually do something just for themselves!

The obstacle to a fulfilling unretirement: selflessness

We recently surveyed 1,361 Canadian homeowners, aged 55 and over. We asked, “If you received a $100,000 cash gift, what would you most want to do with the money?”

Using the money to pay off debts or giving the money to family members or donating to charity were very popular choices. More popular than putting the money towards their own retirement or funding a lifelong dream.

It seems that Canadians are extremely generous souls, putting others’ needs ahead of their own. But is their selflessness preventing them from having a fulfilling and purposeful retirement?

Mark van Graft, Vice President at Mackie Research Capital Corporation, believes it is.

“I enjoy motivating my clients to realize that it’s not selfish to be selfish”

For decades, Mark has been helping Canadians to make informed financial decisions in their own best interests.

“I enjoy motivating my clients to realize that it’s not selfish to be selfish,” he says. “They should spend some of their investments on their own enrichment versus sitting on savings or worrying about everyone else.”

Mark likes to help his clients embrace their personal goals and aspirations in their retirement. “Coaching clients who have unrealized dreams is one of the favourite parts of my job,” he says.

“I show clients how to use a reverse mortgage, not as a last resort or dire straits resource. A reverse mortgage can unlock funds to go beyond aging at home. It’s more like enabling a desire to ‘unretire,’ to bring a passion project to life, to fund a legacy project or finance a long-held dream to travel or innovate.”

Write a new chapter and unretire

Joyce Wayne is a retired college writing instructor and an unretired novelist and blogger. “I have always loved writing,” she says. Continue Reading…

Working till 66 is no tragedy

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Senior man working on a computerBy Jonathan Chevreau

Earlier this week there was extensive mass media coverage of the latest Sun Life “Unretirement” survey, which found more Canadians now expect to work full-time at age 66 than the number who are retired.

Given that the traditional retirement age has been 65, and remains the age many older investors think of collecting Old Age Security and the Canada Pension Plan, the general tone of this coverage was that the idea of working to such an “advanced” age is in itself scandalous.

Regular readers of the Hub will know what I’m about to say, and did say Wednesday night on a CTV item on the survey, which you can find here at Findependence.TV’s Video Hub. With rising trends to longevity, more and more people are choosing to work longer or feel financially compelled to do so. Indeed, governments around the world generally would love to see us all work longer and pay taxes longer, which is why the age of OAS onset is being bumped up to 67 for younger Canadians.

Plan for Longevity, not Retirement

I still love the positioning of Mark Venning at ChangeRangers.com, who says we should be planning not for Retirement, but for Longevity. Continue Reading…

Are you ready for The Big Shift?

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bigshiftBy Jonathan Chevreau

If you’re intrigued by the kind of content we publish on the Hub, you should be fascinated by The Big Shift, a book published originally in 2011 by Marc Freedman.

The subtitle tells it all: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife. Freedman is a “social entrepreneur” who founded a firm called Civic Ventures (now Encore.org), and previously published (in 2007) a book called Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life. We’ll review that in the next few weeks.

Both books have crystallized my thinking of what this site is all about, so much so that we have renamed the fifth of our six major blog categories Encore Acts, (from the previous IBusiness Ownership). As we noted in Saturday’s new weekly wrap, an Encore Act may or may not include entrepreneurship but there are many Encore Acts that may not involve launching a new business.

The Longevity Bonus: centenarians galore?  Continue Reading…

Will “Unretirement” launch your Encore Act?

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BN-ER243_bkrvun_GV_20140923135029By Jonathan Chevreau

Unretirement is a concept not unlike Findependence or Financial Independence; it’s also the title of a recently published book by Chris Farrell, Bloomberg Businessweek columnist and senior economics contributor for American Public Media’s syndicated radio show, Marketplace.

I’ve also seen the term Unretirement used by Sun Life Financial in Canada but that seems to be more a marketing term the company uses to promote its surveys on traditional retirement. That survey has been going for six years now, which certainly predates the publication of Farrell’s Unretirement Continue Reading…