Charting Retirement is a weekly snapshot of retirement-related data.
A key to retiring well is paying off debt before retiring. Canadians have generally been successful in accomplishing this, but there has been a significant drop in the percentage of paid-off mortgages since 1999. This drop can be attributed to (a) home prices having risen faster than general inflation and (b) persistently low interest rates, which have reduced the sense of urgency in paying off debt. The result is less financial security in retirement than was the case in 1999.
(Source: Statistics Canada Survey of Financial Security, 2016)
Frederick Vettese is former chief actuary of Morneau Shepell and author of Retirement Income for Life.
