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For the most part, this lifestyle is about having experiences and being active, rather than having more possessions. He finds that increasingly seniors want to travel, pursue sometimes pricey hobbies like golf, eat out at restaurants, and maintain cottages or second homes in warm places. Bill VanGorder, 66, the Nova Scotia chair of CARP, a group representing older Canadians, says he wants the same level of comfort he enjoyed while he was working-maybe even a bit better. Most Canadians, of course, hope to do better than bare-bones. So you can relax about the worst-case scenario: Even if you don’t save at all, you’re not going to have to live off cat food.
#Retirement magic number plus#
A couple which receives the average CPP payout, plus maximum OAS, and maybe a little bit of GIS, can expect to receive almost $30,000 a year. “We’ve kind of made sure the Canadian elderly don’t live in poverty but we’ve given them, like, 50 cents more than the poverty line,” says study co-author Robert Brown.Ĭanadians who have worked most of their lives can also usually count on substantial Canada Pension Plan payouts in retirement. If you and your spouse are at least 65, those government programs would provide you with a combined $22,750 a year if you have no other income.
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#Retirement magic number full#
The combination of full Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) program for low-income seniors pretty much covers all your basic needs, at least outside the highest-rent cities. Here’s the good news: to achieve this bare-bones scenario you don’t have to save a penny. The study’s authors conclude that the annual cost of such a retirement in five major Canadian cities ranges from $20,200 to $27,400. This is not the stuff of most people’s retirement dreams, but the study does budget for three nutritious home-prepared meals a day, a one-bedroom apartment plus utilities, along with typical health-care costs and other essentials like clothing and personal-care products.
#Retirement magic number tv#
The study describes a no-frills retirement as one in which a couple rents (rather than owns), has no vehicles (so they take public transit), and it doesn’t include spare cash for even minor indulgences such as cable TV or alcohol. For this scenario, the costing has already been done for us in a recent study, called Basic Living Expenses for the Canadian Elderly, by three University of Waterloo researchers. This is the worst-case scenario, but it’s good to know what you’ll need if you just want to scrape by, if only because it gives you a starting point to build from. Interested to know what kind of dent each of these three scenarios will make on your nest egg? Read on and we’ll price them out for you. If your retirement is still quite a ways off, it’s often good enough just to know what you’ll need to save to achieve each of three levels of potential retirement: a bare-bones basic retirement a middle-class retirement with two cars, some restaurant meals and vacations every year and finally, a deluxe retirement complete with a vacation home or regular jaunts around the world. While many retirement plans use complex formulas to calculate what you’ll need, we find that many Canadians just want a ballpark to aim for.
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