Definitely makes me happy to have the pension I do through my employer; I make retirement contributions without even thinking about it. Also, as things are right now, retired teachers can substitute teach to a maximum of 100 days/school year and still collect pension benefits, so both my wife and I plan to do that. It's in areas like this where my lower earning potential seems like not such a bad trade-off ...
I have read a fair bit about retirement and other financial issues, and my understanding is that people in their 30s have this huge guilt complex ("I should be saving more") about retirement savings when we just don't have the same savings potential (paying for daycare, child expenses, lower income relative to the rest of your career, etc) as people do later in life. Apparently, if your net worth is increasing slowly but steadily throughout your 30s you are actually doing OK.
As to CPP and OAS, I thought there had been some recent-ish changes to them that have led these programs to be a lot more stable than people seem to think they are (equating issues with Social Security in the USA to our government retirement plans). If I understand right, a person who works until they are 65 should expect (in today's money) about $13,000 between CPP and OAS - so if you are a couple, that's $26,000 right there - which goes a long way to many people's retirement goals.
As Canadians, for a long, long time, we've been led to believe that we need 80% of our current income to retire to even a reasonable manner when that's just not true ... lots of info I have seen suggests most people are OK in that 40-50% range as you are generally no longer paying for your house or child-related expenses. I think almost everyone in Canada has this goal of a $1,000,000 retirement nest egg when they just don't need that much.
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