Few Canadians “defer” their Canada Pension Plan or Old Age Security to a later start date

Writing in the Globe and Mail, Patrick Brethour reports that “only a tiny fraction” of Canadians are deferring public retirement benefits like the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), “a decision that could cost each of them tens of thousands of dollars in foregone payments.”

You can collect CPP as early as age 60, but can defer receiving it until age 70, he explains. While CPP benefits are reduced if you start collecting them while you are age 60 to 64, “CPP benefits increase by 0.7 per cent for each month of deferral past age 65, hitting a maximum increase of 42 per cent at age 70.”

You can also defer your Old Age Security (OAS) payments, he notes.

“Deferring the OAS is slightly less lucrative, with those payments rising by 0.6 per cent for each month of deferral, to a maximum of 36 per cent at age 70. A person who was eligible for the maximum regular payments under CPP and OAS and who opted for a full five years of deferral would receive an additional $10,168 a year excluding clawbacks, based on current rates,” he writes.

Citing data from Employment and Social Development Canada, the Globe report notes that 62 per cent of us start our CPP while age 60 to 64. Twenty-seven per cent start it at age 65. Seven per cent start it while age 66 to 69, and just four per cent start it at 70.

For OAS, “the picture is even more lopsided,” as almost no Canadians defer their payments – 93.6 per cent of us start it at 65.

So why aren’t more people deferring until age 70 (and getting up to $10K more per year), as experts like Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald have urged?

The article cites several reasons for not waiting – many “can’t afford the delay,” and start receiving benefits as soon as they can. For poorer Canadians who lack other retirement savings, the federal payments are “a lifeline,” the article notes, adding that senior poverty rates for Canadians “fall as they enter their 60s” due to receiving CPP and OAS.

Next, if you don’t expect a long life, deferring the benefits is a poor idea. Save with SPP has had relatives and friends who passed away before even reaching age 70.

Finally, those of us still working as we hit age 65 tend to opt to receive CPP, because if we don’t, we still have to pay into it without getting any additional benefit from it.

Save with SPP’s circle of friends and family is split on this issue. Those without workplace pensions took CPP as soon as it started. Some who did have a pension started it at 60, asking “why leave money on the table?” Others with workplace pensions that have a “bridge” benefit (which ends at 65) have long planned to start CPP and OAS when the bridge benefit ends. We have one friend who started CPP at 60 and is now about to turn 67 and is still working (and still paying into CPP). We have one relative who plans to take her CPP at 70 to max out the benefit, even though she is not working steadily at the moment.

It would seem it’s a personal choice for most people, based on their unique financial circumstances. The one important takeaway here is simply to know that you do have the option to get a bigger payment if you choose to start it later.

The Saskatchewan Pension Plan allows you to collect your benefits at any time you choose between age 55 and 71. The SPP’s Retirement Guide provides full details on your options for your SPP account when it comes time to retire, including SPP’s range of lifetime annuities. And you don’t have to stop working (as is the case with most company pension plans) to start collecting SPP! Be sure to check out SPP today.

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More than three quarters of older Canadians fretting about retirement finances: NIA

Is retirement a concern for Canadians – especially those aged 55 to 69 who are approaching or have begun their “golden years?”

New research from the National Institute on Ageing at Toronto’s Ryerson University, reported on by CTV News, suggests that a significant majority of older folks are indeed quite worried.

According to the CTV report, the research found that “77 per cent of Canadians within the 55-69 age demographic are worried about their financial health.” As well, CTV notes, “79 per cent of respondents aged 55 and older revealed that their retirement income – through RRSPs, pension plans and Old Age Security – will not be enough for a comfortable retirement.”

The NIA research found that people were worried about the cost of long-term care in the latter part of their retired life.

While 44 per cent say the plan is to “age at home,” the data suggests that many don’t realize how expensive long-term care at a facility would be.

“Nearly half of respondents aged 45 and older believe that in-home care for themselves or a loved one would cost about $1,100 per month, while 37 per cent think it would cost about $2,000 per month,” CTV reports.

“In reality, it actually costs about $3,000 per month to provide in-home care comparable to a long-term care facility, according to Ontario’s Ministry of Health,” the broadcaster explains.

It’s essential that Canadians know the true costs of long-term care as they plan for the future, says Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald of the NIA.

“Canadians retiring today are likely going to face longer and more expensive retirements than their parents – solving this disconnect will need better planning by people and innovation from industry and government,” she tells CTV.

Dr. MacDonald suggests one step we can take early in retirement to help us fund unexpected care costs later is deferring our Canada Pension Plan or Quebec Pension Plan payments until age 70.

Dr. MacDonald spoke to Save with SPP on this topic in detail earlier this year.

“Someone receiving $1,000 per month at age 60 would receive $2,218.75 per month if they wait until age 70 to begin collecting,” the article notes. Another source of income for long-term care costs could be the equity in your home, the article concludes.

Save with SPP has gone through this, with both our parents having had to receive the help of a long-term care facility to battle health issues in their latter years. Fortunately our parents had always been savers, and their retirement income was sufficient to handle these unexpected costs. Will yours?

If there’s a retirement savings program available at your workplace, consider joining it and contributing at the maximum possible level. If your employer doesn’t offer a program, refer the boss to the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. They can help set up a retirement program at businesses large and small. Check out SPP, marking 35 years of delivering retirement security, today!

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Are Canadians doing things backwards when it comes to rolling out their retirement plans?

New research from Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald of the National Institute on Ageing at Ryerson University suggests that in some cases, we are putting the cart before the horse when it comes to our Canada Pension Plan (CPP) or Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) benefits.

Save with SPP spoke by telephone with Dr. MacDonald to find out more about her research.

In her paper, titled Get the Most from the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans by Delaying Benefits, Dr. MacDonald notes that “95 per cent of Canadians have consistently taken CPP at normal retirement age (65) or earlier,” and that a mere one per cent “choose to delay for as long as possible, to age 70.”

This, she writes in the paper, can be a costly decision. “An average Canadian receiving the median CPP income who chooses to take benefits at age 60 rather than at age 70 is forfeiting over $100,000 (in current dollars) of secure lifetime income.”

She tells Save with SPP that tapping into your (registered retirement savings plan) RRSP and other savings first, as a bridge to a higher CPP or QPP later, can make a lot of sense. “Rather than holding on to the RRSP, why not use the RRSPs sooner and CPP later,” she explains.

Even waiting one year – taking CPP or QPP at 61 instead of 60 – means you will get nearly 12 per cent more pension for life, she says. The longer they wait to start CPP, the more they get – about 8.2 per cent more for each year after age 65, Dr. MacDonald explains.

If you go the other route, and take your government pension at 60, “you don’t know what your savings will look like at 70,” she notes. As well, those savings may be harder to manage when you are older, especially if you are “drawing down” money from a registered retirement income fund (RRIF).

Many people, she notes, worry that taking government benefits at 70 is too late, and that they will potentially die before getting any benefits. Most people who are in good health will live long beyond age 70, she says; the data shows that only a small percentage of Canadians don’t make it past their 60s.

Dr. MacDonald notes as well that the retirement industry tends to help people save, but doesn’t help them on the tricky “decumulation,” or drawdown phase. It would be akin to having an adviser set you up with skis, boots, poles and bindings, and deliver you the top of the ski hill – where you would be on your own to figure out how to get to the bottom, she says.

While “Freedom 55” was a popular concept in decades past, the data shows that the retirement age is creeping back up to age 65 and beyond, she says.

“Finances… are part of the reason why people are retiring later,” she explains. Pension plans are less common these days, and not all of them still offer an early retirement window. Few offer incentives to late retirement, she adds.

Her paper concludes that Canadians – and the financial industry that advises many of them – need to rethink the conventional idea of taking CPP or QPP as soon as possible in retirement, and then hanging onto RRSPs until it is time to RRIF them up the road.

“Despite wanting and needing greater income security, Canadians are clearly choosing not to delay CPP/QPP benefits, thereby forfeiting the safest, most inexpensive approach to get more secure retirement income,” she writes. By showing, through the Lifetime Loss calculation, that Canadians can lose out on $100,000 of secure retirement income, the hope is that the industry and policymakers will begin to rethink how they present retirement strategies to Canadians, the paper concludes.

We thank Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald for taking the time to speak with Save with SPP.

Celebrating its 35^th year, the Saskatchewan Pension Plan (SPP) has a long tradition of building retirement security. SPP is flexible when it comes to paying out pensions – you can start as early as 55 or as late as 71. Check out SPP, it may be the retirement solution you are looking for.

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New NIA study says we may need to work longer before retiring

New research from the National Institute on Ageing (NIA) entitled Improving Canada’s Retirement Income System sheds some new light on the age-old question of when to retire.

Writing about the research for the Advisor, James Langton sums up the study, by noted retirement experts Keith Ambachtsheer and Michael Nicin, this way – “greater pension coverage, higher savings and longer working lives will all be needed to ensure an adequate retirement for Canada’s aging population.”

The paper, reports the Advisor, warns that “retirement is getting more expensive and harder to achieve.”  The research found that the cost of long-term care in Canada will “triple to $71 billion in the next 30 years.”

So the costs of looking after older folks are going through the roof at a time when “pension coverage has steadily declined, and private saving is proving harder to achieve amid rising costs for housing, education and childcare,” the Advisor notes, again quoting the NIA paper.

The authors of the study also note that even those who do save are doing so in less favourable conditions, the Advisor tells us. “Today, we face historically low bond yields and uncertain equity returns in the face of climate change and political turbulence across the world. This means retirement savers may not get as much help from favourable financial markets as they did in the post-World War II decades,” the Advisor states, quoting from the paper.

The paper reaches the conclusion, the Advisor reports, that three important public policy considerations need to be met. Pension coverage must be increased, savings rates need to be boosted, and there needs to be thought given to ways to incent people to work longer.

Commenting on the same report in a Globe and Mail opinion column, the NIA’s Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald elaborates further on these ideas.

“Canada can better keep up with the retirement income systems of other countries by improving the labour-force participation of older workers,” she writes.

“Having more older Canadians working will also increase tax revenue. With Canada’s aging population, it will help ease shortages in labour and skills supply as baby boomers contemplate their exodus from the work force over the coming decade.”

Working later also has an impact on saving, she notes. “If you work longer, you’ll need to save less for retirement. Every year you delay your retirement is one fewer year you’ll need to draw on your savings, and one more year for those savings to grow,” she explains in the Globe article.

The takeaway here is this – you may live for a long time. If you don’t have a workplace pension, you will have to save on your own for retirement. If you haven’t saved enough, you will have to work longer than you planned.

A step you can take on your own to address this problem is joining the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. This is a great resource if you don’t have a workplace plan or are not sure how to invest. SPP does the heavy lifting for you, growing your savings at a very low cost (and with a great track record) and then turning those savings into an income stream at the time you leave the workforce. It’s never too late to get cracking on saving, so check them out today.

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing, classic rock, and darts. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22

A look at the best of the Internet, from an SPP point of view

Tax-free pension plans may offer a new pathway to retirement security: NIA

With workplace pensions becoming more and more rare, and Canadians generally not finding ways to save on their own for retirement, it may be time for fresh thinking.

Why not, asks Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald of the National Institute on Ageing, introduce a new savings vehicle – a tax-free pension plan?

Interviewed by Yahoo! Finance Canada, Dr. MacDonald says the workplace pension plan model can work well. “Workplace pension plans are a key element to retirement income security due to features like automatic savings, employer contributions, substantial fee reductions via economies of scale, potentially higher risk-adjusted investment returns, and possible pooling of longevity and other risks,” she states in the article.

Dr. MacDonald and her NIA colleagues are calling for something that builds on those principles but in a different, tax-free way, the article explains. The new Tax-Free Pension Plan would, like an RRSP or RPP, allow pension contributions to grow tax-free, the article says. But because it would be structured like a TFSA, no taxes would need to be deducted when the savings are pulled out as retirement income, the article reports.

“TFSAs have been very popular for personal savings, and the same option could be provided to workplace pension plans. It would open the pension plan world to many more Canadians, particularly those at risk of becoming Canada’s more financially vulnerable seniors in the future,” she explains.

And because the money within the Tax-Free Pension Plan is not taxable on withdrawal, it would not negatively impact the individual’s eligibility for benefits like OAS and GIS, the article states.

It’s an interesting concept, and Save with SPP will watch to see if it gets adopted anywhere. Save with SPP earlier did an interview with Dr. MacDonald on income security for seniors and her work with NIA continues to seek ways to ensure the golden years are indeed the best of our lives.

Cutting bad habits can build retirement security

Writing in the Greater Fool blog Doug Rowat provides an insightful breakdown of some “regular” expenses most of us could trim to free up money for retirement savings.

Citing data from Turner Investments and Statistics Canada, Rowat notes that Canadians spend a whopping $2,593 on restaurants and $3,430 on clothing every year, on average. Canadians also spend, on average, $1,497 each year on cigarettes and alcohol.

“Could you eat out less often,” asks Rowat. “Go less to expensive restaurants? Substitute lunches instead of dinners? Skip desserts and alcohol?” Saving even $500 a year on each of these categories can really add up, he notes.

“If you implemented all of these cost reductions at once across all of these categories, you’d have more than $186,000 in additional retirement savings. That’s meaningful and could result in a more fulfilling or much earlier retirement,” suggests Rowat. He’s right – shedding a bad habit or two can really fatten the wallet.

If you don’t have a retirement plan at work, the Saskatchewan Pension Plan is ready and waiting to help you start your own. The plan offers professional investing at a low cost, a great track record of returns, and best of all, a way to convert your savings to retirement income at the finish line. You can set up automatic contributions easily, a “set it and forget it” approach – and by cutting out a few bad habits, you can free up some cash today for retirement income tomorrow. It’s win-win.

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing, classic rock, and darts. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22

The National Institute on Ageing is a relatively new university-based think tank focused on leading cross-disciplinary research, thought leadership, innovative solutions, policies, and products on ageing.

The NIA brings together thinking not only on the money side of retirement, but the health side as well.

So says the NIA’s Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, PhD and FSA (she is also resident scholar at Eckler Ltd.), who recently took the time to speak with Save with SPP. “A happy, healthy retirement is not just about money,” Dr. MacDonald notes, adding that NIA hopes to tap into university, government and other worldwide research to come up with “better ideas that will help Canadians as they age.”

One aspect that Dr. MacDonald has done much research about is the “decumulation” phase of retirement, the period when savings from the work years are used to finance life after work.

“Retirement planning used to focus on saving up until age 65,” she explains. You would then start spending and travelling, with “the old assumption (being) that you would begin to need less money as you aged, that you wouldn’t be spending as much by age 90.”

However, Dr. MacDonald notes, this type of thinking overlooked the possibility that retirees might eventually need to pay for age-related healthcare costs, including living in a nursing home.

In reality, many retirees in their 60s and even 70s “can still earn money, and can choose to downsize, or reduce spending. Their expenses are flexible,” Dr. MacDonald explains. “Once you are 80 to 85, there is less flexibility, expenses are increasingly less ‘voluntary’ (namely the costs arising from declining health) – so it is at this age when having a steady stream of income becomes much more necessary for financial security.”

What she calls “shifting socioeconomic customs” have driven changes in the way retirement money is spent and the effect it has on individuals and families.

“Society has shifted, women are now working more and are not able to provide elder care without accruing considerable personal expense,” notes Dr. MacDonald. Even still, the majority of caregivers are women. The NIA’s report on working caregivers, authored by Dr. Samir Sinha, a geriatrician and Dr. MacDonald’s colleague at the NIA,  shows that women are not only more likely to be working caregivers, but that they provide much more care to their elderly relatives than do men. What’s more, the typical age at which women provide care overlaps with peak career earning opportunities and with their own family building, which in turn causes a knock-on effect on their lifetime earnings and income potential. Financial independence in older age has significant ripple effects, beyond just the individual.

In the past, it used to be more likely that the family would look after elderly parents, helping to feed them, socialize them, prepare their taxes, transport them, and so on. And while 75 per cent of elder care is still done by the family, increasingly people are finding they have to or want to pay for their own care as they enter their late 80s and 90s. And while family caregivers play an important role in the lives of the elderly, people generally prize their independence. But independence also comes at a cost. “It costs a lot of money to replace (the care provided by family), it has become extremely expensive for nursing home care.,” says Dr. MacDonald.

While some retirees can afford to cover the costs of their own care, those who can’t must be assisted by the government, she explains. “The overall effect of this is that some older people aren’t decumulating their savings as expected. They are holding onto their money; they are concerned about the future,” she adds.

Dr. MacDonald is the author of a recent paper on this topic for the C.D. Howe Institute called “Headed for the Poorhouse: How to Ensure Seniors Don’t Run Out of Cash Before They Run Out of Time.” The paper suggests the creation of a government-sponsored LIFE (Living Income for the Elderly) program that would provide additional life income beginning at 85.

“LIFE would provide longevity insurance to Canadian seniors at their most vulnerable time of life… giving them choice, flexibility and income security at advanced ages,” she writes in the paper.

In an article for the Globe and Mail written last year, she suggests women – who live longer – consider not starting their CPP benefits until they are older. “Starting CPP benefits at the age of 70 instead of 65 will increase a person’s CPP by 42 per cent,” she notes in the article.

NIA is looking at other ways to boost income security for older retirees. One way, says Dr. MacDonald, would be to find ways “for people to stay in their own homes longer.” Another way would be to allow family members providing care to be paid. Currently rules generally allow paid caregiving by strangers, but not by someone’s daughter,” she notes.

We thank Dr. MacDonald for taking the time to talk with us.

Remember as well that before decumulation can occur there needs to be retirement savings. The Saskatchewan Pension Plan offers a flexible savings program for individuals.

Written by Martin Biefer

Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. After a 35-year career as a reporter, editor and pension communicator, Martin is enjoying life as a freelance writer. He’s a mediocre golfer, hopeful darts player and beginner line dancer who enjoys classic rock and sports, especially football. He and his wife Laura live with their Sheltie, Duncan, and their cat, Toobins. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22