How Health affects your Retirement?

Canada is a healthy nation, continues to face significant public health challenges in preventing chronic diseases. Good health is a major resource for social, economic and personal development and an important dimension of quality of life.

Example of the time value

Life expectancy – Life expectancy in Canada is about three years higher than in the United States, but remains significantly lower than Japan, Spain, and Switzerland. The average life expectancy in Canada is currently aged 84 for men and age 87 for women.

In 2016, there were over three-quarters of a million (770,780) people aged 85 and representing 2.2% of the Canadian overall population and about 13.0% of the population aged 65+. In one survey, it finds that only 42% Canadian seniors felt they had saved enough and 14% of the retired Canadian wished they made this step beforehand, 44% wished they had saved more for retirement. There were nearly two women for every man aged 85 and older, which mostly reflects the differences in life expectancy between the sexes. Between 2011 to 2016, nearly four times the rate for the overall Canadian population, which grew by 5.0% during this period, so the ratio of the number of people aged 85 +  grew by 19.4%. Approx. 247,000 people aged 85 and older were living in collective dwellings such as nursing homes, long-term care facilities and seniors’ residences in 2016.

Canadians may have trouble preparing for retirement because most of the time they take more money out of retirement savings to pay for expenses. Today approx 66% of Canadians had unpaid credit cards and about one in five were still making mortgage payments. According to another survey, retirees have 26% of debt for car payments, 7% unpaid health expenses, 7% owed money, etc.