Young people may have a better understanding of the importance of saving for retirement than their elders give them credit for, according to a new survey from Laurentian Bank of Canada.

The recent Ipsos Descarie / Laurentian Bank survey shows that 82% of young Quebecers aged 20 to 29 wish to save for retirement.

Moreover, 61% of them plan to invest in the next 12 months. And those who make RRSP contributions do so rather for long-term savings and not for the immediate income tax refund it offers.

The survey also indicates that the age of 25 is somewhat of a breaking point when the majority of those who wish to invest actually take action.

Among the 20-29 age group survey participants, 38% have already contributed to a RRSP, or 54% in the 25-29 age group and 23% in the 20-24 age group.

Young people invest on average every two years. However, since they still have limited available resources, 40% of them have invested less than $2,500 to date, which is below the annual amount of $2,775 that they judge necessary to ensure nice retirement years.

“Young people dream of travelling, having kids, but also about investing for retirement. This is good news. However, the actual amounts invested by young people are rather modest and might not be sufficient to ensure the retirement of their dreams. It is essential to continue to raise the awareness of this issue among young adults in order to prevent them from ending up ‘poorly retired’, since 30% of them admit that they do not know how to invest in a RRSP,” said Stéphane Gagnon, vp, marketing at Laurentian Bank, in a release.

The survey also reveals that the subject of RRSPs is not often discussed between young people and their parents.

It seems that young adults become fully aware of the retirement issue mostly when they join the labour market.

These conclusions are based on the findings of the Ipsos Descarie / Laurentian Bank survey of 1,304 respondents aged 20 to 29, conducted between Dec. 7 and 14, 2005, in the province of Quebec. The maximum statistical margin of error for each sample is 2.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.