About 30% of retired Canadians returned to work to pay bills, says ING survey Read m

Probably about the same percentage.

I give them all kudos for trying. No better way to find out than to try.
 
I thought these poor Canadians just crossed the border once or twice a month to fill up with cheap American gasoline, buy cheaper stuff at Walmart and Costco, and pick up some unique items at Trader Joe's. ??!?!?!
 
Chuckanut said:
I thought these poor Canadians just crossed the border once or twice a month to fill up with cheap American gasoline, buy cheaper stuff at Walmart and Costco, and pick up some unique items at Trader Joe's. ??!?!?!
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I thought they were all snow birding in the SE and SW USA.......
 
kmt1972 said:
About 30% of retired Canadians returned to work to pay bills, says ING survey | CTV Winnipeg News

Nearly a third of retired Canadians, or 30 per cent, have returned to work and the main reason is they misjudged how much the easy life would cost.

I wonder what is the percentage for USA.
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That number really sounds high!

Looking at the article, I do note that only 10% went back to work full time (31% of the 30%). The article isn't clear as to whether some of those working part time had planned to do so from the get-go. That is, retired from full time employment with the intention of dabbling with some part time work. This as opposed to retiring with the intention of never working at all again and then finding you are forced to return to work because you predict you will run out of money.
 
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Retire while you can. It is easier going back to work than it is coming back from the dead.
 
Fermion said:
Retire while you can. It is easier going back to work than it is coming back from the dead.
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LOL. ( I'd rather die than coming back to work after RE. Even if I live like a homeless, I ... am ... not ... coming ... back ... to ... work. Over my dead body. Over my dead body. Over .... :horse:)
 
robnplunder said:
LOL. ( I'd rather die than coming back to work after RE. Even if I live like a homeless, I ... am ... not ... coming ... back ... to ... work. Over my dead body. Over my dead body. Over .... :horse:)
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Wow. You guys hated your job that much? While my job has a good amount of stress I actually very much enjoy it and enjoy the people I work with. Of course one will ask the question why I am thinking about retiring early? The reason is I am also very lazy and I enjoy doing nothing than going to work, even if it is work I enjoy. After I retire still hope to maintain the personal relationships I have at the workplace.
 
Lots of jobs, mine included, would be very hard to return to after even a few years attempted retirement. I'm counting on getting it right when I go so I don't have to come back for more years at a lesser job I can get.
 
growing_older said:
Lots of jobs, mine included, would be very hard to return to after even a few years attempted retirement. I'm counting on getting it right when I go so I don't have to come back for more years at a lesser job I can get.
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This is very true for me. If I had to go back to work after retiring for a couple of years the best I can do is a much more junior role at about half the pay.
 
I have some Canadian friends who returned to work - but it was because the NA oil boom made them offers they couldn't refuse.
 
I am a retired Canadian, and I think I will be OK. I live in a part of the country that attracts retirees. As I get to know more people in the community I have realized that some of them retired when not financially ready to do so, and they are cutting expenses and looking for job opportunities. As we all know, members of this forum are outliers. Not everybody is LBYM, obsesses about SWR, and builds spreadsheets for every possible scenario. Like many parts of life, for many people this is trial and error.
 
Meadbh said:
As we all know, members of this forum are outliers. Not everybody is LBYM, obsesses about SWR, and builds spreadsheets for every possible scenario. Like many parts of life, for many people this is trial and error.
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I do get that I am an outlier along with many here. But I am still surprised at the number of former co-workers we know where their personal financial lives and retirement plans are not looking great, yet they are project managers for a living. Their jobs center around planning, budgeting and making spreadsheets for 6 - 8 figure project budgets. If they can't plan well financially for day to day expenses, let alone for retirement, who can? And why don't they? They have the skills. The required budgeting skills are part of their basic job functions.
 
The last two sentences of the article indicate that the statistic is interesting but may not be valid:

Both of the online surveys were conducted with about 1,000 randomly selected Canadian adults who were at least 55 years old and Angus Reid Forum panellists.
The polling industry's professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.
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Yes, but the penetration of online access is quite high, and if anything, one might expect that people who answer online surveys would at least have access to the information they need to make good financial decisions.
 
Well, it is really a survey of the population of people older than 55 who belong to the survey forum and who opted to take this survey (and it looks like survey takers get rewarded for taking surveys: "As a ‘thank you’ for each survey you complete, you will be rewarded with 0.5 to 5 Survey Dollars or entries into sweepstakes draws to win gift certificates or cash.") not a random sample of the general population of Canadians older than 55 who had retired.
 
Meadbh said:
I am a retired Canadian, and I think I will be OK. I live in a part of the country that attracts retirees.
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OT question here, but what part of Canada attracts retirees? Nothing strikes me as a retirement haven the same way as with certain states in the US.
 
About 30% of retired Canadians returned to work to pay bills, says ING survey...

British Columbia has a relatively mild climate and lots of interesting places to explore. While Vancouver has a rainy climate (like Seattle), Victoria has more sunshine. I live in the BC Interior, specifically the Okanagan Valley, where the climate is relatively dry, summers are hot and sunny, and winters relatively mild (for Canada).
 
Chuckanut said:
I thought these poor Canadians just crossed the border once or twice a month to fill up with cheap American gasoline, buy cheaper stuff at Walmart and Costco, and pick up some unique items at Trader Joe's. ??!?!?!
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Chuckanut, Do you live in Whatcom county or does every highway down have a Walmart, Costco and Trader Joe?

On topic,

Most of the people I know that retired and returned to work did so because they wanted to work and maximized their income by collecting retirement and salaries. Most of these were semi-high to high income. One guy that seemed to love to be busy said he and his wife used their after retirement income to spoil their grandchildren.

I do see many older people working retail and odd job/yardwork around me. Some look tired and others look like they are enjoying it. To each his/her own.
 
Tadpole said:
I do see many older people working retail and odd job/yardwork around me. Some look tired and others look like they are enjoying it. To each his/her own.
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I see that too. Most seem to be happy with who they are and while some may be working because they need the income I suspect most just want something to keep busy with.

Our original retirement plan did include getting part time jobs, not for the income but for just getting out, but then we found that in WV they don't pay enough to make it worthwhile.
 
About 30% of retired Canadians returned to work to pay bills, says ING survey...

I do think a lot of people were involuntarily retired in the US and perhaps also in Canada in the past five or six years, either in a RIF or because their companies went under, and were not financially ready to be RE'd (and did not consider themselves to be retired, but rather laid off). DH has former colleagues in this category. They might have been looking for work ever since, and would probably be thrilled to find anything at all close to what they had been earning.

The Canadian dollar is also not as robust now vs other currencies as it has been, but I am not sure how much that might affect the pocketbooks of most retired Canadians.
 
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Median income of seniors in Canada in 2011 was ~$29,000/year, so not too shabby (if your house is paid off). In constant dollars, the figure was $34,000 for 1976. Ouch.
Financial Security - Retirement Income / Indicators of Well-being in Canada

The thing I found interesting was how much employment income has decreased for seniors from 1976 ($14,700) to 2011 ($2,600). So a lot less seniors must be having to work than in the past.

Average elderly family income after tax in 2011 was $57,700 but IIRC, the lowest quintile is somewhere around $20k/year. Average income after tax by economic family types (2007 to 2011)

I had read a statscan survey that in 2005, the median NW (included principal residence and NPV of pensions) for 65+ (individuals not couples) was ~$303k. Considering the average house price in Canada is currently $391k, that's not a lot of capital outside of housing.

I see very few seniors working where I live in Canada outside of the very helpful and knowledgeable guys at Home Depot and VP's that don't know when to quit. Although I'm not really sure if those guys are 65+ or just look like they are.
 
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