A lot of times, we read about what we are supposed to do before and during retirement, and have trouble connecting the dots of good advice.

Author Rick Atkinson has taken a unique and forward-thinking approach to the topic in Why Me? And No Gold Watch! To make all the information more relatable, he turns it all into a story – the story of Sally McBride, a marketing exec who is unexpectedly let go from a good job at age 57.

Sally is initially shocked by the news that she’s been terminated. “Will I be able to find a new job? Who will hire someone who’s 57… am I now facing retirement?”

An overwhelmed Sally does the right thing, however. When faced with a situation she’s not sure how to cope with, she reaches out to friends for advice. Her friend Thelma soothes her initial fears about retirement, that she would be “unproductive” and losing her identity. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” explains Thelma. Retirement, she says, is an opportunity for all of us “to be enthusiastic about their futures and shape (our) destinies.”

The book weaves in quotes from real people about their perspectives on retirement. Rick Hansen is quoted as saying, on goal-setting, that “it should be challenging enough to make you stretch, but not so far that you break.” Another nice feature of this book is that each chapter also contains a worksheet, for you to add in your own perspectives.

Chapters deal with retirement preparedness, working and volunteering, money, health and well-being, and more – almost every facet of life after work.

In the section on money, Sally meets with friends to talk about how to select a financial advisor, who at a high level talks about the need to have a budget. The worksheet pages at the end of the chapter provide you with your own template; so after seeing Sally walk through it, you can next walk through yourself.

After attending to her financial, health, spiritual and social concerns, Sally is feeling a lot more positive. “You’re beginning to build your vision of retirement, and how to spend your time. You’re giving thoughts to your finances… (and) you’re thinking about your health and well-being strategy,” her friend Thelma enthuses. “The more positive images, questions, implicit beliefs and positive self-talk you engage in, the more positive your mindset,” she adds.

“You’re right, Thelma. I’m beginning to be excited about life after work,” Sally replies.

This book is definitely a positive addition to any pre-retirement/retirement library. Author Atkinson’s style reminds us of talking to a friend or parent, the tone is patient, sensible, non-judgmental, and convincing. If you are unsure about retirement, this book is definitely for you.

A good part of any retirement plan – specifically the financial angle – is to put away money while you’re working to use later to finance life after work. The Saskatchewan Pension Plan offers you a full-service retirement savings plan. SPP will grow your savings (they have an enviable track record of growth) and turn them into a series of lifetime payments when it’s time to turn in the name tag. Be sure to check them out today!

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing and classic rock. He and his wife live with their Shelties, Duncan and Phoebe, and cat, Toobins. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22

New NIA study says we may need to work longer before retiring

New research from the National Institute on Ageing (NIA) entitled Improving Canada’s Retirement Income System sheds some new light on the age-old question of when to retire.

Writing about the research for the Advisor, James Langton sums up the study, by noted retirement experts Keith Ambachtsheer and Michael Nicin, this way – “greater pension coverage, higher savings and longer working lives will all be needed to ensure an adequate retirement for Canada’s aging population.”

The paper, reports the Advisor, warns that “retirement is getting more expensive and harder to achieve.”  The research found that the cost of long-term care in Canada will “triple to $71 billion in the next 30 years.”

So the costs of looking after older folks are going through the roof at a time when “pension coverage has steadily declined, and private saving is proving harder to achieve amid rising costs for housing, education and childcare,” the Advisor notes, again quoting the NIA paper.

The authors of the study also note that even those who do save are doing so in less favourable conditions, the Advisor tells us. “Today, we face historically low bond yields and uncertain equity returns in the face of climate change and political turbulence across the world. This means retirement savers may not get as much help from favourable financial markets as they did in the post-World War II decades,” the Advisor states, quoting from the paper.

The paper reaches the conclusion, the Advisor reports, that three important public policy considerations need to be met. Pension coverage must be increased, savings rates need to be boosted, and there needs to be thought given to ways to incent people to work longer.

Commenting on the same report in a Globe and Mail opinion column, the NIA’s Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald elaborates further on these ideas.

“Canada can better keep up with the retirement income systems of other countries by improving the labour-force participation of older workers,” she writes.

“Having more older Canadians working will also increase tax revenue. With Canada’s aging population, it will help ease shortages in labour and skills supply as baby boomers contemplate their exodus from the work force over the coming decade.”

Working later also has an impact on saving, she notes. “If you work longer, you’ll need to save less for retirement. Every year you delay your retirement is one fewer year you’ll need to draw on your savings, and one more year for those savings to grow,” she explains in the Globe article.

The takeaway here is this – you may live for a long time. If you don’t have a workplace pension, you will have to save on your own for retirement. If you haven’t saved enough, you will have to work longer than you planned.

A step you can take on your own to address this problem is joining the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. This is a great resource if you don’t have a workplace plan or are not sure how to invest. SPP does the heavy lifting for you, growing your savings at a very low cost (and with a great track record) and then turning those savings into an income stream at the time you leave the workforce. It’s never too late to get cracking on saving, so check them out today.

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing, classic rock, and darts. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22

If you Google “retirement + plan” you will find lots and lots of information about stashing some of your cash in a safe investment haven so you can crack into it in retirement.

But there’s more to retirement than just the money side of things (even though that aspect is very important). Save with SPP took a look around to see how people go about setting goals for retirement – making use of the newfound time they now have, in abundance.

According to the Kiplinger blog, just as you may have created a financial plan for retirement, you also need to make a plan to live out your dreams, and to “make the next 20 or 30 years purposeful.” 

Sometimes, work slots us into roles that aren’t really aligned with what we think we are about, the blog explains.  “Many times, work is what you do and not so much who you are,” states Catherine Frank of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in North Carolina. “Retirement is an opportunity to create a life that reflects more closely who you are,” she tells the Kiplinger blog.

The blog quotes one retiree, retired professor Ronald Mannheimer, who decided to work on his fitness, and volunteer, but found he still had gaps in his day. “Keep open time to explore, to perhaps research what you may want to do next,” he tells Kiplinger “But you should be able to look forward to a calendar of activities.”

OK, so we want to spend time doing things that we have always wanted to do. What if we can’t think of any?

There’s a helpful list at Financial Advisor magazine. They suggest becoming a teacher’s aide, working in retail, working as a tour guide, being a driver, volunteering (or working for a non-profit), and athletics, among other ideas.

There are more ideas over at Marketwatch, including “taking up a sport,” getting a hobby, starting a business, and (of course), travel.

The Retirement Field Guide reminds us what not to do – don’t waste time “watching too much TV,” while “having an empty calendar,” or you will find you’ve become a hermit. They offer similar ideas for retirement activities, including learning new skills (say, music), being a mentor, joining or starting a club, and many more.

It’s very, very hard to visualize retirement while you are still working. Very hard.  It’s not like being on vacation. If anything, it’s like every day is the weekend. The advice from the various bloggers cited here is sound – take some time now, while you are working, to think about what you want to do with your hard-earned time. Talk to folks who are already over the wall and enjoying retirement, and you’ll be surprised how busy they have become.

Even doing only things you like often requires a bit of cash. A tremendous resource for creating retirement income is the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. The SPP is pretty unique – it’s an open defined contribution pension plan. You can contribute up to $6,300 a year towards your retirement, and SPP will grow your savings (with professional investing at a low cost) until that wonderful day when you move into fitness and hobbies full time. Then, you can collect those grown-up savings in the form of a monthly, lifetime pension cheque. Check them out today!

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing and classic rock. He and his wife live with their Shelties, Duncan and Phoebe, and cat, Toobins. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22

Old “rule of thumb” retirement planning go-tos may need adapting: Shelestowsky

A great interview with Meridian’s Paul Shelestowsky in Wealth Professional shows that some of the old standard tenets of retirement planning may not translate as well here in the 21^st Century.

An example, Shelestowsky tells Wealth Professional, is the idea that saving $1 million in your retirement kitty is a target we should all be aiming for. But that figure may not be the right target for everyone, he explains in the story.

“StatsCan has reported that close to 40% of Canadians are still working between the ages of 65 and 69,” he states in the article. “Some Canadian adults have their 75-year-old parents living with them; sometimes that means they get help with the finances, but a lot of times they don’t. Similarly, you can’t just assume that your kids will move out when they’re 25 anymore.”

Another rule our parents told us was never to take debt into retirement.

But that’s increasingly difficult to do, Shelestowsky explains to Wealth Professional, in an era where it is common to continue mortgage payments in retirement, and where household debt has reached levels where Canadians are “owing $180 for every $100 they bring home.”

“How can you retire when you’re having troubles getting by with your regular income, and then have to live on 60% of that?” he asks in the magazine article. High levels of debt may explain the greater-than-ever reliance on home equity lines of credit, Shelestowsky tells the magazine.

Planning for retirement is still of critical importance, he says. “Failing to plan is planning to fail,” he notes in the article. Without some sort of savings, he warns, you could be living solely on Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Old Age Security (OAS) payments, which he says works out to only about $1,700 to $1,800 a month, or $42,000 a year for a married couple.

“The government never meant for OAS and CPP to serve as people’s sole retirement income source,” he states in the article. “Back in the day, people could comfortably sock away an extra $200 a month when they’re 20 or 30 years old; now you could say debt is the new normal. And to have a defined-benefit pension plan you can count on in your old age … that’s almost unheard of nowadays. Companies are shifting toward defined-contribution plans, but even that’s not a staple perk anymore.”

Shelestowsky says a solution is to get the help of an advisor to figure out a pre- and post-retirement budget. For those in poor financial shape, the budget process can turn things around; for others, it is a much-needed source of retirement reassurance, he tells the magazine.

If you have a workplace pension plan or retirement savings arrangement, you have a leg up for retirement. But if you don’t, and aren’t sure how to invest on your own, be sure to check out the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. Through this open defined contribution plan, you can contribute up to $6,300 a year towards your retirement – your money will be grown by professional investors at a very low fee, and when the day comes when you are logging off for the last time and giving back your building pass, SPP can turn those savings into a lifetime income stream.

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing, classic rock, and darts. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22

Most Canadians understand the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) – we pay into it, as does our employer, and we can start collecting a lifetime pension from it as early as age 60. But what about the other “pillar” of the federal government’s retirement income program, Old Age Security (OAS)?

The federal government says OAS is available to any Canadian who has lived in our country for 40 years after reaching age 18. If you don’t meet those conditions, you may still qualify under complex “exception” rules.

Currently, the maximum OAS payment  is $613.53 per month, for life. It starts at age 65, but you can choose to defer it for up to 60 months after reaching that age – and if you do, you will receive a payment that is 36 per cent higher.

There is, of course, a big catch to this. If you make more than $75,910, the government will charge what they call an “OAS recovery tax,” or clawback. If you make more than $123,386, you have to pay back all of your OAS payments for the year.

The “conditional” yet “universal” benefit has prompted many to come up with ideas on how to fix it, particularly during the Stephen Harper years.

Back then, a Fraser Institute opinion column in the National Post explained one key problem with OAS. “Unlike the CPP, there is no dedicated fund to pay for OAS,” the column notes. “Benefits are funded with current tax revenues.” Put another way, everyone who pays taxes contributes to OAS, but not everyone gets it – and should higher income earners get it at all, the column asks.

The Fraser Institute recommended lowering the income at which OAS begins to be cut off to around $51,000, with the full clawback moving to $97,000. This, the article suggests, would save the government $730 million per year, since fewer people would receive the full amount.

Another solution – the one that the Conservatives planned to implement – was moving the starting age for OAS to 67 from 65. However, the current Liberal government reversed that decision in 2016, notes Jim Yih’s Retire Happy blog.

But in the intervening years, we have seen debt levels increase dramatically, preventing many of us from saving for retirement. So there are now some arguing for an expansion of the existing system, on the grounds that it doesn’t provide seniors with sufficient income. Indeed, the Liberals campaigned last year on a plan to increase old age security “by 10 per cent once a senior reaches age 75,” reports Global News.

Without getting political, it appears we have come full circle from talk of reforming the OAS and making it harder to get, to talk of increasing its payout for older seniors. Let’s hope governments take a longer-term view of the problem, and focus on ways to better fund OAS – perhaps creating an OAS investment fund similar to what CPP has, one that would make this benefit more sustainable and secure for those who rely on it.

If you are one of the many hardworking people who lack a workplace pension plan, there is a do-it-yourself option that you should be aware of. It’s the Saskatchewan Pension Plan (SPP). They’ll grow the money you contribute to the plan over time, and when it’s time to retire, can pay it out to you in the form of a “made-by-you” lifetime pension. The SPP also has options for your employer to use this plan as an employee benefit.  Check them out today.

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing and classic rock. He and his wife live with their Shelties, Duncan and Phoebe, and cat, Toobins. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22

Here we are, rolling along through the second month of a new decade, and already many of us have left our various New Year’s resolutions well behind. In the dust, even.

Save with SPP scoured the internet for an answer to this question – are there any tactics out there to help you keep your resolutions? What do the experts say?

The MSN Money blog has several ideas.

First, the blog recommends, “the way to achieve your big dreams is to start small… no one begins by lifting heavy weights seven days a week, they start with light weights and build muscle over time.”

Another suggestion from MSN Money is to develop “daily habits that support the results you want in the future.”

At the Men’s Journal site, there’s more interesting advice.

They suggest bribery as a resolution-meeting aid. “Say what? Yep, make a pact with yourself that you’ll get those new ski goggles only after you complete a month’s worth of consistent progress toward your new year’s fitness resolution,” the magazine suggests.

Another good bit of advice is setting written, specific goals, Men’s Journal advises. “I want to get fit” is not specific enough, instead you should write down “I want to run a mile in less than eight minutes and do 10 pull-ups.”

Other ideas include getting support for your efforts on social media, signing up for specific events, and forgetting perfection. “If you get sick and need to take a week off of training, or you get slammed at work and literally can’t carve out a block of time to get in the pool, acknowledge it and move on. Literally. Get back into your routine as soon as possible rather than staying away because of one small blip,” the magazine suggests.

The Toronto Star has a few more for us to ponder.

Don’t be afraid to “switch up your plan” if it isn’t working, and examine you’re plan to “look at why you’re failing.” If the plan’s not working, change it, the Star advises. The paper advises you to be realistic in goal-setting, and to “make new habits,” so that you have things to do instead of the old bad habits you are trying to break.

Save with SPP can add a couple ideas to this list. Start small, and then ramp up over time. If you’re saving money, or paying off debt, this is a good tactic – chipping away works over time. This approach is good for a lot of things.

So if you’re lagging behind in a New Year’s goal of saving for retirement, take a look at the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. Unlike a workplace pension plan, where contributions at some pre-set amount are deducted from your pay, you can start as small as you want and then step up your contributions when you can. You contributions are professionally invested at a low fee, and when it’s time to retire, SPP can set you up with a lifetime pension. Check them out today.

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing and classic rock. He and his wife live with their Shelties, Duncan and Phoebe, and cat, Toobins. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22

If you’re going to live longer, you’ll need more savings

Writing in the Globe and Mail, John Ibbotson flags a new and somewhat concerning problem for Canadians – we’re living a lot longer than anyone expected.

The oldest boomers, he writes, are about to turn 75. And, he continues, “the boomers are living inconveniently long lives.” It is expected that over the next three decades, the number of Canadians over age 85 will increase three-fold.

In the story, McMaster geroscientist Parminder Raina (click here to see his recent interview with Save with SPP) is quoted as saying the big spike in older folks is a big problem. “The rapidity of aging is the real issue for policy makers,” he tells the Globe.

What are the problems with having more old people?

The article identifies a few issues. First, the article notes, “the boomers haven’t saved enough. Which means looking after them will cost younger generations a great deal of time and money.”

Next, “the boomers were also the first generation to stop having enough children to replace themselves, there are fewer young people available to look after the old,” the article reports.

The article notes that “when the pensions and health-care systems that Canadians rely on today were first put in place in the 1960s,” men were expected to live until age 69, four years after retirement began. Now, the article warns, men will live on for another 19 years, and women, 22 years, after reaching age 65.

And with a birthrate of just 1.5 children per couple, Ibbotson writes, Canada’s population would actually decline were it not for immigration.

You’d think that those of us who are nearing retirement might have read that we could live for 20 years, into our 80s or 90s, after retirement, and started putting away a few extra bucks for retirement. Not so, the article tells us – “half of Canadians approaching retirement age do not have a workplace pension. The median level of savings for these people is $3,000. No, there isn’t a missing zero.”

As for not having as many kids, the article quotes Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald of the National Institute on Ageing (click here for Save with SPP’s interview with her) predicts that lower fertility rates mean “that services that have traditionally been provided by the family – namely women – will still need to be paid for.”

So we’re not saving enough and aren’t having enough kids, so there will be little money to spend on our care and no family to provide it free.

Are there solutions? The article lists a few – raising the retirement age, perhaps, or forcing older people to “unlock the wealth accumulated by older Canadians” in their real estate and other holdings. Rather than giving seniors discounts, they should be paying a premium for services, the article suggests. Such measures might be political suicide, Ibbotson admits, so maybe things like long-term care insurance should be promoted.

The bottom line, he writes, is “if we are to live well, we must care for one another, however old we are and whatever we may need.”

The lack of a workplace pension is a serious issue for many Canadians. Workplace pensions are usually a sort of “forced savings,” where money comes off your paycheque and is later returned to you in the form of income. While some people want to spend all of their paycheque, few with pensions or retirement plans at work complain when they can draw on that retirement income. If you don’t have a workplace pension plan, you need to save on your own for retirement. A great way to do this is through the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. They’ll grow your savings with professional investing at very low fees, and when it’s time to finally start collecting your savings, they can pay it out to you in the form of a lifetime pension – monthly payments that continue for as long as you live. Check them out today!

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing, classic rock, and darts. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22

With credit card bills coming in after the holidays, many Canadians are looking to save money. Saving money is a popular New Year’s Resolution, but unless you figure out how you’re going to save money, your goals like buying a home and saving towards retirement aren’t as likely to happen.

Saving money doesn’t have to painful. Here are 10 simple ways to save big in 2020.

1. Disposable Products

Not only do disposable products cost money, they hurt the environment. Instead of using plastic cutlery, use metal cutlery. Skip the paper napkins and go with reusable cloth napkins. Cloth dishrags are a good alternative to pricey paper towels.

2. Lottery Tickets

You have a better chance of being struck by lightning than winning the lottery (no, I’m not making this up). Instead of spending $5 a week on a lottery ticket, consider putting that money toward your savings.

3. Smartphone In-App Purchases

Most apps these days are free, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to watch your spending here. The new trend is in-app purchases. If you’re having trouble solving a crossword puzzle, the app may offer you a hint that you pay for. To avoid the temptation, turn off in-app purchases or add a passcode so you think twice before paying.

4. Fuel

Although the price at the pumps isn’t as high as it once was, it still makes sense to plan out your driving trips ahead of time. GPS makes doing this a lot easier. Plan out your errands so you’re not driving too far out of the way because you forgot to pick up milk and bread. Research driving techniques for fuel efficiency.

5. Books, Blu-rays, Digital Movies and TV

When’s the last time you read a book or watched a movie more than once? Save yourself some money and use the public library. Most libraries in big cities have an excellent selection of books, e-books, movies and TV shows. If you don’t have cable, nothing beats Netflix.

6. Deal Websites

Deal websites like Groupon are a great way to save money, as long as you don’t become addicted. Avoid buying stuff you don’t need by only visiting them when you plan to buy something. A further caution: only visit reputable websites. Avoid those with cheap copies of branded goods, expensive shipping costs to return items and short deadlines for refunds.

7. Gym memberships

I’m all for people going to the gym and getting in shape, as long as they show up. But two-thirds of people with gym memberships never step foot inside a gym. If you’re joining a gym for the first time, consider hiring a personal trainer for the first couple of weeks to show you the ropes. Once you get the hang of things, why not exercise with a buddy to keep each other motivated? If your condo has a decent gym, you can skip the gym membership fees altogether.

8. Premium Cable Packages

Do you really need 500-plus channels? Consider downgrading to basic cable or cut the cord altogether. Netflix and antennas are great cable alternatives.

9. Utilities

Do you sometimes forget to turn down the heat when you’re leaving your home? In a typical home, about 60% of energy costs are from heating and cooling. Install a programmable thermostat, and in the wintertime set it so the temperature automatically goes up before you wake up, goes down when you leave home and then goes up again for when you arrive back home. Reduce the temperature by four to five degrees at night and when you’re away to save 15% on your heating bill.

10. Ready Meals and Prepared Food

If you’re a foodie, it might be hard to imagine giving up your favourite dishes. You don’t have to—you just have to be willing to find thrifty alternatives. Instead of picking up ready-made dishes like pasta, lasagna and side dishes at the supermarket and paying top dollar, consider taking cooking classes and learn to prepare them yourself, if you don’t already know how. Weekdays can be hectic, so prepare your culinary masterpieces on weekends when you have more time.

About the Author

Sean Cooper is the bestselling author of the book, Burn Your Mortgage: The Simple, Powerful Path to Financial Freedom for Canadians. He bought his first house when he was only 27 in Toronto and paid off his mortgage in just 3 years by age 30. An in-demand Personal Finance Journalist, Money Coach and Speaker, his articles and blogs have been featured in publications such as the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, Financial Post and MoneySense. Connect with Sean on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Many plan post-retirement work, but few actually do: RBC survey

You’re forever hearing folks who haven’t done a lot on the retirement savings front say that their retirement plan is to just keep working.

However, a recent Benefits Canada article, citing new research from RBC, brings up some interesting findings that may throw a bit of water on those “keep working” plans.

The survey asked a group of pre-retirees if they planned to keep working, either full or part-time, after they retired. Half of those surveyed said yes, they’d keep at it.

But when actual retirees were asked if they were still working, only 11 per cent “reported they actually had returned to full or part-time work,” the magazine advises us.

The pre-retirees had many reasons for planning to work after retirement, the article notes, including “staying active mentally (68 per cent) and physically (48 per cent), staving off boredom (44 per cent) and generating income (43 per cent).”

Part of the reason why people aren’t working in retirement, the article notes, may lie in the fact that retirement is not always as “planned” as people expect. More than half of the pre-retiree group (55 per cent) say they “expect to know their retirement date a year or more in advance.” But of the retirees, only 39 per cent said they knew their retirement date well in advance, with 16 per cent “reporting they had no advance notice at all.”

“We know that the majority of Canadians do not have a retirement plan, and those who do are more prepared and confident,” states RBC’s Rick Lowes in the Benefits Canada article. “A plan helps you understand all your options so you don’t have to make major trade-offs to enjoy the retirement lifestyle you desire.”

Findings in the UK, reported on by the Daily Express, reached a similar conclusion. There, “nearly two-thirds of people who retired earlier than expected said they were forced to stop working rather than choosing to leave due to no longer needing the income,” the newspaper reports.

The chief reason they stopped working early related to health or physical problems (40 per cent), followed by being “made redundant” or losing their job (18 per cent), followed by eight per cent who left work to care for a family member, the story informs us.

In the UK study, the Daily Express notes, less than one in five people (17 per cent) had sufficient savings to be able to retire earlier than they expected.

There seems to be a sort of sunny view of retirement from pre-retirees that is tempered by the experiences of actual retirees. The idea that one can pick a retirement date a year or more out, and then keep working away afterwards, seems to be challenged by the findings of research.

The majority of retirees didn’t pick a date, with some not having a choice at all. Health, losing a job, caring for a loved one all play a part in determining whether or not we can keep at it on the job front. Only 17 per cent said they had enough savings to be able to pick their own day, thanks to personal retirement piggy banks and/or pensions at work.

Most of us don’t have a pension plan at work. Saskatchewan Pension Plan, a do-it-yourself DC pension plan that handles the heavy lifting of investment and generating a lifetime pension for you. Join the 33,000 SPP members who have watched the plan generate returns of 8 per cent annually since the plan’s inception in 1986.

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing, classic rock, and darts. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22

We all spend a lot of time worrying about retirement – can we afford it, will we enjoy it, will we feel like we’re on the sidelines of life – but very little is written about what that phase of life is actually like.

Save with SPP reached out to noted retirement expert Don Ezra, whose latest book, Life Two , explores what it’s like in that other place, life after work.

Q. You talk about the “u-curve” and how 70-year-olds are as happy as 20-year-olds, which is a great analogy. What are some of the reasons why retired folks are so happy?

Yes, retirement (which I prefer to think of as Life Two) really is the best time of life. Happiness studies in every country say the same thing: that this is the time when we tend to rate our happiness highest. There are so many reasons.

The neurological reason is that our brain chemistry changes, and we’re less stressed and less driven, and more inclined to be content, and see the glass as half full rather than half empty. Our measuring stick changes.

Even without the science, think of it this way. When we’re kids, we have no money. We have lots of time. When we work and raise a family, we start to accumulate money. But we’re very stressed for time, during Life One, our working life. It’s not until we retire, or at least stop working full-time, that we have both the time and the money to truly enjoy all of life. That gives us freedom!

So think of Life Two as a full life; a mature life rather than an immature one; a happy life rather than a stressful one.

That’s how we ought to reframe retirement.

Q. We love the casino analogy and the advice about investing (safety and growth). Why do you think so many people think they know enough about investing to do it by themselves without professional advice? Is there anything that could be done to help improve general investing knowledge?

It’s strange, really, isn’t it? We don’t think of ourselves as knowing enough about medicine or the law to practise it ourselves. And yet, as you say, so many people think they can do investing by themselves. It’s a field of study, a discipline that requires expertise, that’s all I can say. And I’m not convinced that general education can help the cause much, just as it wouldn’t with medicine or the law.

We do need to understand some fundamental aspects of medicine and the law – what it’s about, how it operates, how to explain our own circumstances to the professionals so that they can help us. (Because, yes, we are the experts on ourselves!) I think it’s the same with investing.

That’s what I tried to do with the analogy of the casino, because that’s something that most people can associate with: uncertain outcomes, with chances of making money and losing money. And then, very importantly, we should understand the ways in which investing differs from a casino. All of that leads to the general notion that there are two main financial goals. To some extent we’d like safety and predictability, and to some extent we’d like long-term growth. Typically the two are fundamentally opposed, and the more we want of one, the less scope there is for the other. So, the most important decisions regarding our financial selves are the ones that say how much safety we want and how much growth we want. The rest, the implementation to deliver our goals, can be left to the experts.

Q. We get more research, like the recent research carried out by the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan and Abacus Data that suggests that folks are afraid to retire, largely because they fear they can’t afford it. Is this because everyone has so much debt they can’t imagine living on less money. Are there other reasons driving this?

There are lots of reasons for the fear. In fact there are three main questions that people fear thinking about, and two are not financial at all.

The first is psychological: Without my work to define me, how do I define myself? A sort of: what would I put on my new business card? “Retired” is so negative. So … you need to learn how to find new motivation and redefine yourself.

Second: How will I fill my time? Linked to this: I have a partner, and we’re frankly not used to spending that much time together.

And third (and this is what surveys say is the biggest fear): Will I outlive my money? This is the one you’ve asked about, so let’s deal with it.

One reason is that most people have little idea about longevity. And to the extent they’ve ever thought about it, they tend to remember a number for life expectancy at birth. They don’t realize that life expectancy for the average retiree takes you much further than life expectancy at birth, because some people pass away before they retire. And they don’t realise that life expectancy is simply an average, not the limit of life.

For example … Suppose there’s a country for which life expectancy at birth is 80. That means it’s the average age at death. But some people pass away before they get to 65. They are the ones who keep the average as low as 80. Those who survive past 65 are, in general, a longer-lived group, and their average age at death may be more like 85. And in addition, that’s an average: half of them will outlive that age. But typically people in this hypothetical country, to the extent they think about lifespan at all, will believe they’ll be gone by 80.

Even if people realised this, it still wouldn’t tell them how to calculate an annual drawdown from their assets that ought to be sustainable over their future lifetimes. Most people tend to grossly overestimate how much they can draw down each year: they guess something like 10 per cent every year instead of a much lower number.

These are all technical reasons, of course, and they say nothing about one’s personal circumstances, like ongoing debt. Even without debt and a mortgage, people are still afraid of thinking about these things.

That’s why I wrote my book Life Two, first to reassure them that they’re not alone in their fear. In fact, even the experts have those three fears! And second, to show them how they can think through some of the issues and answer those questions for themselves. I can’t tell them, “Don’t worry, everything will be all right” – because that simply isn’t credible. What I try to do is show them how to relate the expertise to their own circumstances. And that should give them a feeling of control. It’s like driving a car. They’ll still have their own decisions to make – direction, speed – but at least it’ll put them in the driver’s seat.

Q. What’s the best thing you have experienced – maybe the nicest change – now that you are in Life 2?

Oh gosh, so many things! And that’s even though at first I felt totally discombobulated, like a tree that had been uprooted, and I didn’t know what kind of new tree I wanted to be, nor where I should plant my new roots. The long (for me) transition between Life One and a good Life Two is what caused me to start doing the research (hey, let’s learn from what others have experienced) that led to my Life Two book.

If I had to pick out just one thing, it would be very personal. It’s the totally unexpected gratification of hearing from readers of the book and the accompanying website that something I wrote or identified caused them to change their thinking or to take action that made life better for them. And they come from countries around the world – because of course the three fears are not country-specific. Every personal note makes my day, my week, my month – and together they make my life.

I suppose I could generalise and say that the discovery that, in your own Life Two, you realise things about yourself that you were unaware of, and which please you, is a very nice unexpected aspect.

Q. Why do you think it is so hard for working folks to visualize what it will be like to be retired?

I think it’s that we become so used to the routine of our Life One. And then we’re forced to change it. It’s that tree analogy. I experienced this myself.

For over 40 years I had planted my roots deep into soil that nurtured growth.  I loved the experience of life and work. It had a pattern, a rhythm, that I grew deeply attached to. Then that changed, when I retired. Harry Levinson, a pioneering professor of psychology at Harvard, had this piece of wisdom in one of his books; he said: “All change is loss, and all loss must be mourned.” Retirement was a big change. And mourning isn’t something we look forward to.

I needed to plant a new tree. But, as I said earlier, I didn’t know what kind of tree I wanted it to be, nor where exactly I wanted to plant it, nor if I would change my mind. The freedom to choose, freedom that I’d dreamed about, freedom that was the first word in our family Christmas letter that year … it was still new. And it took time – more than three years, in my case – before I had some idea about my personal answers to those questions. And even then, I remember thinking: some roots are growing in new soil, but they’re new roots and not yet deep; and only time will give them traction.

That’s why the questions “Who am I?” and “How will I fill my time?” are so scary, for many of us. As you can guess, the conferences that I speak at are attended by geeky types (like me!), and it’s terrific to see how pleased they are that someone actually talks about these touchy-feely issues.

Q. What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about retirement?

How much I like it. I’ve been flattered to be asked, many times, if I would take something on as a part-time role. No! Anything that imposes an ongoing obligation will send me back to a condition that I’m thrilled to have solely in my past, and I don’t want it in my future. Now I’m free and I’m happy. I had always thought that part-time work (yes, I really loved my work) would be something I’d love to do forever. And for a few years that was great. Now … my family says I work as hard as ever, but the difference is that it isn’t a job, it’s pursuing a passion.  Makes all the difference in the world. Freedom.

We thank Don Ezra for taking some time from Life Two for some questions from Save with SPP. Be sure to check out his website.

If you are saving for your own life after work, a helpful resource is the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. This plan, unlike most, isn’t related to anyone’s workplace. The money you contribute is grown by professional investors at a low cost, and at the time you retire you can receive it as a lifetime pension. Check them out today!

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing and classic rock. He and his wife live with their Shelties, Duncan and Phoebe, and cat, Toobins. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22