[Slava]

Originally Posted by Johnny199r

People have different retirement goals or expectations.

If someone wants to just stay home, volunteer, spend time with family, and eat very cheaply, then sure, retirement wont cost very much. That's great, if that is what they want.

However, many people have dreams of travel when they retire. Additionally, some people in high stress occupations, or physically demanding occupations, may feel like they can't continue to work until a certain age, and so they aim to retire early.

Another big factor affecting retirement is people carrying debt into retirement. A retirement may be pretty challenging if an individual is still carrying a substantial mortgage into their retirement timeline.

Everybody is different.

Do you want money to help support your kids? Are you going to try to save enough money in case you have to go into a nursing home? Are you just counting on your kids to pay for that, if it happens? Will you have money for medications?

My goal is to retire in my 50's and live at least half the year outside of Canada and travel my face off.

My wife and I are each professionals. We live in an apartment, drive a used honda civic we payed cash for, have no desire to have children and plan for the day we can leave our high stress jobs behind.

Someone with kids/grandkids might have a completely different retirement plan. That's great. There's no right answer.

Ive seen older relatives living in poverty in retirement. It's not for me. Ive seen my mom nearly have a breakdown because she needed help paying for her parents nursing home bills. Things don't magically workout without planning and foresight. I'm willing to sacrifice now for later.

It's entirely this. You can't just save blindly and hope it works, or not save and assume that living on CPP/OAS is going to be enough. It obviously comes down to lifestyle and what you want retirement to look like, and that can also change drastically through the years. But you really need to have a plan, regardless and work toward whatever that desired outcome is.