I recently attended in our community a weekly trade fair where I viewed a number of retirees sitting at tents and behind tables selling their wares to consumers – through conversations I learned that several were doing this in an attempt to maintain at least a subsistence level of monthly income to help pay their rent, costs of prescription drugs and other basic monthly costs.
Doing some research on this recently, I learned that standard Canadian pensions (CPP and OAS) at the rough maximum a married couple can expect to receive if both people worked their lives through, nets them collectively about $22,000 per year. Now, if you were born in 1958 or later, you also don’t collect OAS until you are 67 – not 65 any longer. This contributes to the need for many of the elderly to work to later years in life in order to survive retirement financially – as the average retired middle-class couple owning their own home, require statistically, approximately $40,000 per year to live comfortably. Supporting this, a recent Bank of Montreal survey shows 59% of respondents stating that they will have to supplement their pension incomes through continuing to work after retirement.
It is difficult for many in low to mid levelled salaried positions without company pensions to expect to be comfortable in retirement unless they initiate some significant entrepreneurial action or personal savings program of their own years before retirement is reached – in fact, I wonder why we call it retirement any longer at all – it’s become just a shifting for most to other jobs. So this is my raising of the awareness part of this article – Take Action!
Build things you can sell online, become a sales affiliate for some direct selling organization, try consulting in some capacity, start an online business of some sort (YouTube content creator, shopping portal, online publishing or editing, freelance writing, website creation, etc.). There are any number of things a person can do to build that additional nest-egg one will need as one leaves the primary work-force – and your best energy years for this are now!
There are many “on the side” opportunities one can take to build a second income stream prior to retirement. The key is to do it – If you don’t try or fear to try, you will potentially be looking at some very bleak retirement years ahead. Don’t let that happen to you.