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3 misconceptions about retirement in Canada – CBC.ca

Published

5 years ago

January 18, 2020

A new report found that the reality of retirement in Canada isn’t quite what people expect it to be.

The online poll of 1,800 people conducted by Ipsos on behalf of RBC revealed notable misconceptions surrounding retirement. They include the timing of that last day on the job and how Canadians actually spend their days after clocking out.

Respondents were Canadians 55 years and older, some in their pre-retirement years and others who have already retired. An important caveat is that all said they have retirement assets of $100,000 or more.

“Our expectations for retirement aren’t always met,” said Rick Lowes, vice president of retirement strategy of RBC.

Here are the three common misconceptions highlighted in the report.

1. Most people don’t know their retirement date far in advance

So much for counting down the days to retirement months in advance. Among the survey respondents, 55 per cent expected to know their retirement date a year or more in advance. But just 39 per cent had that much notice.

In fact, 16 per cent had no advance notice of their retirement. The results varied from province to province: Respondents in Atlantic Canada were the most likely to say they had no notice before their retirement day arrived.

Marissa Lennox, chief policy officer for CARP, the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, said health is the No. 1 reason people end up retiring earlier than expected.

“People in bad health often overestimate how long they can work,” she said. “The second reason is familial issues. Someone may choose to leave the workforce to care for a parent, spouse or grandchild.”

Mandatory retirement ages are no longer legal, but things like lay-offs, restructuring, and redundancy brought about by technology also push people into retirement with little notice, Lennox said.

2. Only a minority become ‘snowbirds’

Retiring to sunnier climes is a common Canadian dream. Close to a third of poll respondents said they expect to be “snowbirds” who spend the winter months in warmer locations such as Florida, Arizona or Mexico.

But of those respondents who had actually retired, just 18 per cent actually fly south for winter. That stat doesn’t surprise Lennox.

“The fact is while it’s nice to fantasize about retiring in a little beach town in paradise somewhere, or spending the better half of our lives travelling the world, it’s just not realistic for most,” she said.

The survey found that those from Alberta were the most likely to be snowbirds at 32 per cent, followed by retirees from Saskatchewan and Manitoba at 23 per cent.

Ernie Zelinski, author of How to Retire Happy Wild and Free, says the types of jobs available to people after they retire can often be a shock. (Submitted by Ernie Zelinkski)

3. Few people work part-time after retirement

Many Canadians plan to have some sort of second act in retirement, working either full or part-time once their main career has come to an end. In fact, they may be counting on it to pay the bills, said Lowes.

Among the poll’s respondents who hadn’t yet retired, 50 per cent said they expected to work at least part-time but just 11 per cent of retirees polled said they’d found work.

“If we haven’t had early notice of retirement, and we haven’t got plans in place, and we may be relying on work to help us achieve our goals, that may not be as available as we’d hoped,” he said. Retirees may discover that it’s harder to get a job than expected, or at least the kind they’d hoped for that will accommodate a semi-retired lifestyle.

Edmonton retiree Ernie Zelinski, author of How to Retire Happy Wild and Free, said people may discover that the type of work they can get in retirement isn’t worth it.

“If you’ve been making a job at $120,000 a year and then you lose your job at 55 and then you have to work a job at $15 an hour, is that going to be sufficient? Those factors have to come into effect too. Would you enjoy being a Walmart greeter or anything else that may be available to you?”

Lennox said she questioned the report’s finding about the small portion of working retirees, given the number of CARP members who say they counting on income from part-time work.

However, she said one explanation could be that since so many are retiring later in life, their ability and desire to work once they’ve finally hung up their hats isn’t what they expected.

“The trend is that people are retiring in their 70s and 80s, so the likelihood of going back to work after that point is much lower,” Lennox said. “We’re thinking of the traditional retirement age of 55 or even 65, and that’s just not what’s happening today.”

The findings are part of a poll that was conducted between April 2 and April 8, 2019. For this report, the data is drawn from a sample of 1,800 people age 50 or more who have retirement assets of $100,000 or more. The results are considered accurate to within +/- 2.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

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Two youths arrested after emergency alert issued in New Brunswick

Published

7 hours ago

September 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.

Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.

A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.

Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.

Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

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World Junior Girls Golf Championship coming to Toronto-area golf course

Published

8 hours ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.

The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.

Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.

“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.

“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”

McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.

“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”

Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.

Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.

“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.

“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”

Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.

Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.

Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.

“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.

“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”

The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.

Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.

Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.

Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.

“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

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Purple place: Mets unveil the new Grimace seat at Citi Field

Published

8 hours ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.

The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”

Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.

That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.

New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.

The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.

The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.

“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”

Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.

So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?

“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.

“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”

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