A common concern of many Canadians is: “I can never retire.” It’s usually followed by: “I haven’t saved enough.” These worries are understandable since we live and spend money in the “now.” It’s much harder to visualize how we’ll live and spend money in retirement when it may be 5, 10, 15, 20 or more years away. We don’t know what tomorrow may bring, so how are we able to imagine what life will be like when we’re in our 60s, 70s and beyond?
One way to make it easier on yourself is to imagine your retirement in simpler terms. To start, here are some questions to consider:
- If you own your home, do you think you’ll continue to live there or will you downsize?
- Who will be around you — spouse, family, friends? What does your social life look like?
- Will you consider semi-retirement or part-time work?
- Do you expect that you will be in good general health?
- Will you travel more?
- Do you have any hobbies that you enjoy doing?
Next, what will be your income sources?
- Should you choose to take your OAS and CPP early or later?
- Are you doing all you can right now to max out your annual RRSP limit?
- Are you saving money outside your RRSP?
Once you have created this “sketch” of your retirement, use the savings calculators found on mycanadalifeatwork.com to help you visualize how your RRSP savings could grow:
- Log on and select the Learn section to access a variety of calculators in iAquaint and Smart Path. Once you have a few possibilities in mind, you can set up a savings goal in mycanadalifeatwork.com to help you stay on track
- To make saving easy, you can set up extra contributions through your bank account.
- To do this, set up Canada Life Group RRSP as a bill payee, the bill account number is your CEIRP group RRSP account number. You’ll find this in your statements and/or on mycanadalifeatwork.com
