Nearly three-quarters of Canadian couples do not plan to retire at the same time, most of them citing financial concerns as a prime consideration, according to a study released Monday.

While age differences played a large role in determining if a couple could retire in the same year, many respondents in the Desjardins Financial Security (DFS) study said they needed to continue working to support their children and cover living expenses.

“For couples with children, 67% indicated that their children still require their financial help to pay for their basic expenses such as lodging, food, education and transportation,” Monique Tremblay, a Desjardins Financial Security senior vice-president, said in a news release.

The average age of retirement in Canada is 62, according to Statistics Canada.

Tremblay also noted that the rising costs of health care and a reluctance to prematurely dip into retirement savings is a factor many couples need to consider.

“Couples may be finding that in addition to the social adjustments that come with the retirement of one spouse, potential increases in health-care costs make access to those benefits worth a lot more than the dream of a honeymoon retirement,” she said.

The survey also found that many respondents’ passion for their jobs was a factor determining when a person would retire. Among people aged 40 and over whose spouses were already retired, 20% said they continued to work because they enjoyed their job or because they owned their own business.

Another 12% said they were delaying their retirement because they needed “to have something to do.”

Men are more likely to have to wait for their spouse to retire (34%) because their spouse is younger (56%).

One in four (26%) respondents expects their spouse to retire before them, which is more likely to be the case for females (32%).

Approximately one in ten (13%) respondents state that their spouse has already retired – particularly workers living in couples without children (23%).
SOM conducted the telephone survey on behalf of DFS between August 3 and 16, 2006. In total, 1,666 interviews were conducted with a representative sample of Canadian adults. The sampling plan provides proportional estimates with a maximum margin of error plus or minus 2.6% at a 95% confidence level (19 times out of 20).