June 16: BEST FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE

June 16, 2025

Only 36 per cent of Canucks confident they will “maintain financial stability in retirement”

A mere 36 per cent of Canadians feel they will be financially stable in retirement, according to a new poll for Bloom Finance carried out by Angus Reid.

The poll’s results were covered recently in a Toronto Sun article by Jane Stevenson.

While seven per cent of respondents “say they feel very confident” about their post-retirement finances, “27 per cent say they’re not confident at all, and another 37 per cent feel only slightly confident,” Stevenson’s article notes.

Other poll findings reported by the Sun article:

• “46 per cent say that increasing Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) is the financial relief measure that would be the most helpful in retirement.”
• “67 per cent ranked OAS and GIS in their top two most helpful financial relief measures.”
• “Increasing tax-free earnings for working seniors (39 per cent) and maintaining the current OAS and GIS (35 per cent) were the next most popular measures.”
• “The top expected sources of retirement income for Canadians are Canada Pension Plan (CPP)/Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) (72 per cent), personal savings (69 per cent) and OAS and GIS (61 per cent).”

With nearly three-quarters of Canadians thinking CPP/QPP and OAS will be their top source of income, it’s important to realize these programs provide a fairly modest benefit.

According to the Government of Canada’s own website, the maximum CPP benefit anyone can receive this year is $1433 per month. However, the same site notes that the average amount being paid to new beneficiaries this year is $899.67.

You have to have worked for a very long time in Canada, and have contributed the maximum CPP contribution for all of those years, to get the full benefit.

For those age 65 to 74, the maximum OAS amount is $727.67, another government website notes, while for those 75 and over it is $800.44.

If there’s a takeaway from all these numbers, it’s this – those among us who think the CPP and OAS may be their top source of retirement income may not be aware that the most they can get from these sources is currently just over $2100 a month.

That’s a fairly modest figure. If you have a retirement program at work, be sure you are contributing to it as much as you can.

If you’re saving on your own for retirement, consider partnering up with the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. SPP is an open, voluntary defined contribution plan. Any Canadian with available registered retirement savings plan room can sign up. Once you are an SPP member, you decide how much you want to contribute each year, and SPP does the heavy lifting, investing your savings dollars in our low-cost, professionally managed pooled fund. When it’s time to retire, your choices include a lifetime annuity payment each month, or the more flexible Variable Benefit.

Check out SPP today!

Join the Wealthcare Revolution – follow SPP on Facebook!

CPP, Government of Canada, OAS, Toronto Sun

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