Older Canadians forgoing retirement, working through golden years: census + MORE Nov 30th

REGINA _ Saskatchewan’s budget deficit is down slightly halfway through the fiscal year, tax revenue has taken a dip despite a higher provincial sales tax and a $300-million contingency fund has been drained.
Finance Minister Donna Harpauer says the 2017-18 deficit projection sits at $679 million _ $6 million less than the budget estimate last spring.
The province is also expecting to bring in $53 million less than it had anticipated in March from taxes and non-renewable resources.
Harpauer says the budget is still on track because there have been increases in other revenue sources, such as a fuel tax, and a strong economic outlook is making for positive growth in the GDP for the first time in two years.
The contingency fund, however, is pretty much gone.
The province had already used about half of it in the first quarter to cover public-sector salaries when workers failed to agree to a 3.5 per cent pay cut.
“Compensation savings projected at budget are not likely to be achieved in 2017-18,” Harpauer said in a release Wednesday…

1. Set a goal
If you’re serious about saving you need to set a goal so you know what you’re saving for. Whether it’s a trip to Japan you hope to take in a few months or saving for retirement, having a very specific goal will help you stay motivated and on track.
2. Track your dollars
The best way to get on track to saving is to spend less than you earn. Tracking your spending—either through a daily journal or an app—can help you do this.
3. Trim spending
Consider trimming expenses. Once you know how much you’re spending monthly, you can decide what areas you’d like to cut back on so you can meet your savings goal.
4. Kill two birds with one stone
For those with low to moderate incomes, paying off debt—including the mortgage—is the best tax-planning you can do. That’s because you don’t pay taxes on the capital gains on your home and there’s no tax on the return you get for getting out of debt.
5. Automate it!
Set up an automatic transfer of funds to a savings to a savings account (or TFSA or RRSP) so that a set amount—say 10% of your gross monthly income that comes off your paycheque automatically…

Q. I have been registered with an insurance company through my employer since 2001. At the present time, I have about $50,000 in my plan. I pay 3% and my employer matches 3%. My concern is that I’ve noticed that the insurance company is charging me a high amount in management expenses.
Every month I put in about $100 and my employer matches it. However, the insurance company charges me between $75 to $80 a month in expenses. Is this an appropriate amount or am I being overcharged? I’m in a defined contribution plan in a target-date mutual fund.   — Renee
Investment fee disclosure has always been terrible in Canada, Renee. And not surprisingly, poor disclosure and high fees are positively correlated. The less consumers know, the more the financial industry can gouge them.
Recent changes—so-called CRM2—have provided a modest improvement for many retail investment accounts. I still think the disclosure is deceptive and favours the financial industry over the consumer.
Assuming the $75 to $80 per month in expenses is a true representation of the all-in expenses for your investments, this would equate to about 1…

Paul Edmondson / Corbis
TORONTO – The three months of Bill VanGorder’s retirement were among the longest of his career.
Lured by the promise of relaxation and spare time, the Halifax resident thought he’d relish the opportunity to walk away from an executive position and enjoy the fruits of his labour. But restlessness and a desire to keep contributing drove him back to the job market within weeks, and he was ensconced in a different corporate office three months after relinquishing his old one.
In the four years that followed, a global economic crisis ate into VanGorder’s retirement savings, making the prospect of ongoing work both attractive and inevitable.
Eventually, he decided to go into business for himself, allowing the flexibility of both a stable work life and the perks of retirement – making VanGorder, 74, a prototype of the new brand of retiree.
MORE: What the census tells us about Canada’s aging population
The latest census data from Statistics Canada show more and more Canadians are choosing to eschew the traditional retirement age, whether for their health, their finances or just for the fun of it…

Lured by the promise of relaxation and spare time, the Halifax resident thought he’d relish the opportunity to walk away from an executive position and enjoy the fruits of his labour. But restlessness and a desire to keep contributing drove him back to the job market within weeks, and he was ensconced in a different corporate office three months after relinquishing his old one.
In the four years that followed, a global economic crisis ate into VanGorder’s retirement savings, making the prospect of ongoing work both attractive and inevitable.
Eventually, he decided to go into business for himself, allowing the flexibility of both a stable work life and the perks of retirement _ making VanGorder, 74, a prototype of the new brand of retiree.
The latest census data from Statistics Canada show more and more Canadians are choosing to eschew the traditional retirement age, whether for their health, their finances or just for the fun of it.
More than 53 per cent of Canadian men aged 65 were working in some form in 2015, including 22…