Paul Martin's Business Update - January 10th

Paul Martin's Business Update - January 10th

This is the year of paying for excesses of previous years.

One of the many surveys of Canadians asking about their new year’s intentions comes from the economics unit at CIBC showing the top priority for most people they talked to is paying off debt. Building savings came in second.

When broken down regionally, for every Saskatchewan person who said building savings was their top priority, two said it was debt retirement. Only Quebec had the same two-to-one ratio…every other province had a much more modest gap between these priorities.

In Saskatchewan this was especially true among younger cohorts. That may be a bit of a surprise as young people tend to be more likely to accumulate debt as they build households but that burden is obviously weighing on them enough to make paying it off their top priority for 2014, particularly among those under the age of 24, the group that showed the biggest increase.

All of this points, says the bank, to a focus on short-term financial goals as those ranking retirement planning as #1 is half of the level of just three years ago.

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