40 and no pension: What do you do? + MORE Aug 23rd

It used to be that parents budgeted for post-secondary education or contributing to the costs of a child’s wedding. But now, I am increasingly finding parents planning for home down payment gifts.

The statistics support this and show an increase in down payment help in recent years. A CIBC study from June 2024 found that 31% of first-time home buyers received financial support from family, an increase from 20% in 2015. Financial support currently averages $115,000.

I encourage parents to be careful about gifting too much too early to their children. Being overly generous can discourage your children from making their own way in life.

There’s also a risk that you might need that money someday to fund your retirement, including long-term care costs. Your child could also have a relationship breakdown, which may mean that your gift does not stay in the family.

How to keep the money safe

A gift or inheritance received during a marriage may be exempt from division upon a relationship breakdown…

Pension envy is real. That’s because, when it comes to retirement planning, a defined-benefit pension does the heavy lifting for you. Contributions come right off your paycheque and go into a pool of pension dollars that will fund your retirement, or most of it, anyway. It’s the ultimate “pay yourself first” approach—you don’t even get a chance to spend the money because it’s taken right from the source. But what if, like most working Canadians today, you have no pension? What if you’ve hit 40 and have no retirement savings to speak of?

It’s not as big a problem as you might think. The key is to try to mimic the pay-yourself-first approach by setting up an automatic contribution to your registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) to coincide with your payday. A good rule of thumb to strive for is 10% of your gross income. Remember, in most cases the employees blessed with a defined-benefit pension are contributing around the same 10% rate (sometimes more) to their pension plan…