A recent poll examining the attitudes and behaviours of 1,002 retired Canadians, age 55+ which included 746 retirees who are married or in a common-law relationship conducted in January 2010 by Angus Reid showed that 51% of Canadian retirees indicated that they had no idea, or only a vague idea, of what they wanted in their retirement.  The poll also indicated that 51% of those Canadian retirees that were married or in a common law relationship had the same / shared vision for their retirement as their partner.

This result should cause some pause for thought.  What retirement vision do you have and is it shared by your partner?

A recent article published in the Ottawa Citizen and Financial Post on Friday, January 29, 2010 entitled “Couples should have the same retirement ideas”, provides additional details regarding the poll and also identifies additional reading and support tools that couples can pursue.  Retirement planning should include establishing an understanding of what you would like to do together and also recognizing that your vision will evolve over time.  The article encourages couples to tackle the retirement vision discussion and not to avoid it.

Another interesting poll result was that 34% of retired couples say they are closer than ever because they can spend more time together but 19% say the hardest thing about adjusting to retired life is not being able to do all the things they use to do as a result of a reduced income.

Tags: couples and retirement, retired couples, shared retirement vision

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Retired Living and Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.