Paul Martin's Business Update - June 20th, 2014

Here’s a new slogan: Baby Boomer Remorse.

These words flow from a report by ScotiaBank that looked into baby boomer financial planning for retirement. It turns out a big percentage of this cohort of the population is kicking itself for not saving money for the golden year early enough.

When asked when they started thinking about retirement saving, only one per cent of this demographic group did it while still in school. Here in Saskatchewan about 8 per cent thought it about when they started working. When the bank adjusted that particular question a bit and asked: when do you think you should have started, 40 per cent said…when they started working. Quite a gap.

Saskatchewan people were slow in getting out of the gate on retirement saving. We had the highest percentage of people who started 5 to 10 years before actually retiring. AS a result, many expect to carry debt into retirement.

The good news in the report is that many expect to work at least part-time in retirement and three-quarters say they’re doing it to active, not because they have to.