My 'poor seniors' wake-up call

I did a radio show on retirement and the calls from listeners really threw me

I retired at age 63 from my full-time gig as Globe and Mail personal finance columnist last year because I could afford to.

The people who read my work over the almost 27 years I spent at the Globe tilted toward an affluence that affords them a comfortable retirement. Most of the retired people I know are financially secure.

Last week, in a one-hour appearance on CBC Radio’s Ontario Today call-in show, I was reminded that some retirees are not as fortunate. The set-up question for the show that day was “Affording retirement: what keeps you up at night?” The answer from listener after listener, some with quavering voices, was not having enough money.

Seniors are a comparatively well-off demographic Canada — we did a reasonable job of addressing the problem of poverty in old age back in the late 1960s with the introduction of the Guaranteed Income Supplement. But that doesn’t let us off the hook with today’s financially precarious seniors.

A thought for federal bureaucrats looking at ways to address the mushrooming cost to the government of Old Age Security: Pare down benefits for affluent seniors and shift some of the savings to GIS.

The first caller to Ontario Today began his comments by saying, “In a word, retirement is a nightmare.” He said he was forced into retirement a year ago and is now trying to live on $1,300 a month in combined OAS and Canada Pension Plan retirement benefits.

Another caller said “there’s absolutely no chance of me ever retiring,” while still another said he moved away from friends and family in Toronto to a small town to save on living costs. Another caller said he and his partner are thinking of moving out of the country in retirement for a more affordable cost of living.

The cost of dental care came up a couple of times. One caller said he has all his bills covered in a normal month through his retirement savings, but his spouse has some issues that cost $5,000. “We have to find a way to cover these expenses, which we weren’t expecting,” he said.

I spent much of my career explaining the importance of saving for retirement, but some people just cannot. Some reasons cited in the Ontario Today calls: pushed out of the workforce, immigrated to Canada and had to re-start a career, went back to school to retrain for a different career, and a setback in business.

People in these positions are the overlooked flip side to the “golden retirement” narrative that dominates the conversation about life after leaving the workforce. Retirement is portrayed as a pinnacle life stage where life experience, leisure time and ample savings come together.

I’ve heard consistently that if you have a low income in your working years, the combination of CPP and OAS should give you a comparable or better standard of living in retirement. If this was ever true, inflation in recent years has blown up affordability for low-income seniors. They need help, potentially through a reboot of OAS. Seniors should not be a growing demographic in homeless shelters.

Storylines

• Canada vs. the U.S.: Pollster Angus Reid offers some context on data showing how Americans have a higher standard of living than Canadians. Higher U.S. average incomes reflect the influence of the super-rich.

• Chinese vehicles: A Reddit discussion on the benefits of Canada’s agreement to slash tariffs on an initial 49,000 EVs imported from China. People who have seen and driven these vehicles are impressed at the technology and price.

• F.I.R.E: A look at some young Toronto residents who are working and saving extra hard so they can retire early - as early as age 30, in one case. This trend is known as financial independence, retire early, or FIRE. It’s presented here as a counterpoint to doomspending, where young people act out their pessimism about the economy by spending freely.

Podcast alert

I talk with Christi Rae of The Great Canadian Piggy Bank podcast, which is aimed at parents who want to teach their kids about money. In this episode, we discuss the financial reality of teens today. In other podcast news, I’ll once again be co-hosting some episodes of the upcoming season of Stress Test, a Globe and Mail personal finance podcast for Gen Zs and millennials.

Tune in

The song Country Girl by the shoegaze band Greet Death is a low-fi epic of alienated youth with one of those nailed-it choruses that keep playing in your head. This song is a keeper.