[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Sylvanfan

Furthermore, only two in 10 employees in the private sector have a company pension to help pay for expenses in their golden years. At the same time, the number of retirees is expected to swell as more baby boomers reach retirement age.

Thats been a problem for me. Working as a draftsman, which I admit now was a terrible career choice...I had one year out of 14 where an employer did anything to give me incentive to save for retirement. I actually had a written contract for 5% of your income RRSP matching to a maximum amount of $3500 a year. Well the first year they did it...the second year the economy was going bad and although they had money they pulled the program and folded the company the next year because two guys with massive ego's couldn't reach any type of agreement. So in 14 years of working for private companies...I've had my employers give me $3500 to help with retirement.

Maybe if there was more incentives from governments for private companies to set up more RRSP matching or something to get people to build their own pension it may help out. I'd be a lot less discouraged about investing if I was getting some help. I might make the effort to try and stretch my annual RRSP contributions from 13k a year to 16 if I knew it would net me another 4 from my employer. As is stressing over this...I will end up dead when I'm 65.

Wow, not to be a dick, but isn't that kind of a backwards way of looking at things?

You don't want to invest more in your RRSP's becasue you're not being given more money for doing so????

Seems to me if you don't have an employer who matches contributions you should be making an effort to put away more.

Seems to me that's exactly the kind of thinking that is causing the how problem we're talking about. Too many people who make the argument "Well what's the point of putting this money away when there's no real incentive to do it?".
Do I really need to point out that the incentive is an earlier and or easier retirement?