A story hitting the news in the past couple of days says Canadians need $1.7 million to retire.
YIKES!
I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me, there’s no way no how. Not even the .7 million. Not even close in my savings.
And this is with inflation. Two years ago Canadians needed $1.4 million in savings to retire.
Read one of the many articles here: Canadians now expect to need $1.7M in order to retire: BMO survey.
BMO sucks
The survey was conducted by the Canadian bank BMO which was more commonly known as the Bank of Montreal.
Not my favorite bank. I had an account with the Bank of Montreal for a brief time when I was attending the University of Victoria. It was probably the closest bank from the campus. No other good reason for me to choose it.
The bank irked me because the statements were addressed to Mr. Cheryl. Multiple times I brought my statements into the branch and tried to convince the staff that I was not a man. Oh sure, the tellers seemed to believe that I was a woman but the bank never changed that status on my mailings.
So I closed the account. Grrr. I wonder how many male clients named Cheryl the Bank of Montreal has.
If BMO can’t tell the difference between men and women based on a first name that is more commonly assigned to one gender, I don’t have a lot of confidence in their survey.
But I do wonder how many BMO tellers and other staff will have $1.7 million in savings when they retire.
$200 away from financial crisis
Look at the bigger picture that half of Canadians don’t earn enough money to meet their basic monthly bills and are $200 away from financial disaster.
Two in five British Columbians are less than $200 away from insolvency.
Where are these Canadians who will have $1.7 million to retire? Clearly for half our residents, there’s no money left over to put aside for retirement or emergency savings.
Who can afford to retire in Canada?
A topic I’ve brought up in many posts is how I know I can’t afford to retire in Canada.
And apparently no one who has $1.7 million saved up will be able to retire in Canada either! Ha ha!
This $1.7 million in savings to retire was being discussed on the radio on my drive in to work. One caller did say they’re already at that mark, but most callers said no way, that’s an impossible goal.
The radio hosts talked about housing costs and having to move to remote or undesirable locations in Canada to find low cost housing. But then groceries and other services will be higher priced because of the cost of transporting them to these areas.
Most people aren’t going to hit that $1.7 million in savings unless they inherit a house to live in or sale. I don’t know about the rest of you, but there is no chance I’m going to inherit a house from anyone.
The hosts did talk about retiring in lower cost countries. Portugal came up. I haven’t given Portugal much thought but it is a popular destination for retirees and digital nomads. Europe has never interested me much as a place to live, but never say never.
What do you think? Will you have $1.7 million in savings when you retire? If not, don’t retire in Canada!
Published by Cheryl @ The Lifestyle Digs on February 11, 2023.
