15 Interesting Financial Statistics

Hey everyone,

I recently read an interesting article, titled '15 Interesting Investment, Personal Finance and Retirement Statistics [Canadian]', that listed some very informative financial statistics.

For those of you who would rather just get the gist of the article, I have listed the statistics below. As always, I wish you all the very best in you endeavors.

- Only 38% of Canadians contributed to a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) before the March 1, 2010 deadline (BMO – March 2010)

- 68% of Canadians haven’t opened a Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) (Mackenzie Investments – February 2010)

- 53% of Canadians 55 years of age and over have not done any retirement planning (RBC – December 2009)

- Only 34% of Canadians reported having a financial plan (BMO – February 2010)

- 30% of Canadians expect that they will have to work after retirement (Investors Group – November 2009)

- 20% of Canadians are counting on the Canadian Pension Plan, a lottery win or an inheritance, instead of contributing to an RSP (TD – February – 2010)

- 37% of Canadians plan to delay their retirement, up from 28% a year ago (Investors Group – November 2009)

- 40% of both retirees and pre-retirees are concerned about maintaining their standard of living (RBC – January 2010)

- 48% of Canadians who are still in the work force are worried about not having enough savings (RBC – January 2010)

- One in five (18%) Canadians do not know what they hold in their investment portfolios (BMO – February 2010)

- 58% of Canadians who know what investments they hold think they are not on the right track (BMO – February 2010)

- 25% of Canadians feel they have enough money to fulfill their retirement dreams (RBC – January 2010)

- 21% of Canadians say they definitely did not save enough money for retirement (TD – February 2010)

- 75% of retired Canadians don’t know how much they spent in their first year of retirement (RBC – January 2010)

- 52% of retired Canadians felt they spent more than they expected in their first year of retirement (RBC – January 2010)

The Problem With Retirement These Days

Happy Easter weekend everyone,

I find myself with a few minutes to spare while waiting for my family to finish cooking all of us a fantastic meal and, as such, I would like to quickly write about a serious problem that many people are now facing when it comes to retirement.

Human beings are living longer than they ever have before, sometimes, even passed the age of 100 years. As the ideal retirement age for most people is still around 65, people should adequately plan for about 35 years of income once they retire. Sadly, this is rarely the case, as can be seen at Walmart's across the nation. It occurs to me that it is rarely the choice of the elderly door greeter's to have gone back to work at such a late age, more likely, they are forced to look for an income once they run out of retirement savings.

It is important to plan far ahead of retirement, so as to insure the proper forecasting of necessary income, once one actually retires. A good exercise to implement is to write down the actual age that you would like to retire, then to decide how much income monthly you will require once you retire, and finally to calculate the amount of years between that age and 90 (the average life span of most humans ends short of 90 years). Once you have all of these figures, multiply the monthly income you have listed by 12 (months in a year) and then again by the number of years between when you plan to retire and 90. This will give you an idea of how much income you REALLY need to retire.

This is, of course, a relatively simple calculation. We should also consider taxes and inflation when calculating necessary retirement income. Inflation, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is the silent predator who always eats away at the value of our money. Taxes, as we are all aware, have been steadily increasing for years. It is almost a foregone conclusion that taxes will be considerably higher once we all reach the age of retirement than they are currently. As the cost of living goes up every year, one must take into consideration the likelihood that what one may consider a sufficient monthly income NOW, will not be able to support him/her once he/she actually retires.

Many people, once they perform an analysis of how on track they are to reaching their ideal retirement age, are startled to learn that there is NO way that they will be able retire when they would like to (if at all). While this can be alarming, it is important to confront the problem now, while there is still time to make the necessary changes to our retirement strategies.

The key to retiring with enough income to sustain yourself is to make sure that there are multiple streams of income coming in during your retirement years. Sitting down with a financial services industry professional now, to learn about some of these alternatives, may save you a great deal of hardship down the road; when, invariably, it will be too late to do anything except go back to work. Sadly, Walmart is always hiring...