Retirement is taking a different perspective

People no longer go to school, work and then retire before their demise. Currently, people are living longer and are actually working longer since they have to take care of their daily needs.

People need to change their thinking about retirement to the current way of life explained Jonathan Chevreau, author of the book Victory Lap Retirement. People are living longer than expected.

And this is not only about what people are saying as Statistics Canada has also proved that there is an increase number of people aged 55 and above in the workforce. In comparison to the figures of lat year, there are 170,000 more people in the workforce. Taking a lot at the 10.6 million Canadians that are aged 55 and above, it can be seen that 36% of them are in the work force or looking for jobs.

Chevreau described the situation as encore career, legacy career, semi-retirement is popular but victory lap is the new description.

But the truth of the matter is no matter how people decide to call it, the fact still remains the same that more people aged 55 and above are doing it.

Data also shows that majority of Canadians aged 55-64 do not have pensions, hence find it difficult to pay their bills.
It was also discovered that asides from the fact that they are living longer, about 32% of them have less than $1,000 in retirement savings which means paying their bills becomes very difficult.

But this situation does not only affect those involved but also the country as a whole because taking a look at the long run, millions of Canadians will have little income and this is not a good sign for the economy as they will also not have much income to save.

According to deputy chief economist at CIBC World Market, Benjamin Tal ,this situation has trickled into the economy over the years. “The issue is not people that are retiring now, or in the very near future. On average they are fine.”

He also stated that even though people are living longer, the work pattern of Canadians have also changed over the years. People no longer stay in one job for long periods. Data also shows that before the age of 40 more workers have over 10 different jobs.