You Could Be Retired For Longer Than Your Working Years

Could your retirement last longer than your career? Dave and Alexandra Macqueen discuss why that’s becoming more common than ever.

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It’s interesting to think about a retirement income plan because you could still be in early retirement you have 30, 35 years to go potentially.

So it’s still a long-term horizon.

Yeah, my dad’s, my dad’s gonna hit 40 years in retirement.

So you know, what’s changed, you can have a retirement that is as long or longer than your entire working life. That is a huge dramatic change over the last 150 years in Canada. And if I went outside my house and flagged down somebody on the street and asked them to estimate how long people live in retirement, that person is probably not gonna say 40 years.

Right. No, I agree. And my father’s already been in retirement longer than he worked as a high school principal. Like you, though, or like your family, defined benefit pension plan obviously indexed to inflation, took a lot of the pressure off, had no debt. They’d paid the mortgage off early. All the things that you talked about is very much how he grew up.

Had the kids early, and then did some fairly significant saving late life, so he’s in a fairly good spot. This is why I always say you need to marry somebody with a defined benefit pension plan. This is a key part of financial planning.