The “4% rule” is another popular method for working out how much you need to retire in Canada comfortably. The idea is that you take out 4% of your savings for every year of retirement. For example, to be able to spend $40,000 a year in retirement, using the 4% rule, you would need to save $1,000,000.
Many financial planners say that having 60 to 70% of your current income in retirement will allow you to maintain your lifestyle in retirement. But, this rule of thumb doesn't work for everyone. If you have low income, you might need the same amount of money when you retire as you do now to cover all your basic needs.
Retirement Income and the Upper Middle Class
In order to have a retirement income that's considered to be upper middle class in Canada, you would need to have around $1.7 million saved. This would give you an average income of around $100,000 annually for a total of 25 years.
The average monthly amount paid for a new retirement pension (at age 65) in October 2024 was $808.14.
You expect to withdraw 4% each year, starting with a $24,000 withdrawal in Year One. Your money earns a 5% annual rate of return while inflation stays at 2.9%. Based on those numbers, $600,000 would be enough to last you 30 years in retirement. In fact, by age 92 you'd still have over $116,000 in savings.
How Much Money Do You Need to Retire With $100,000 a Year Income? To retire at 65 while having a salary of $100,000, you need approximately $1.5M if you plan to live until the age of 85 and $2.1M if you plan to live until the age of 95.
In 2021, the top 1% of people in Canada earned about $194,000 (CAD 271,300) or more from all sources, and to be considered in the top 10% of people in that same year, you would have had to have made about $76,000 (CAD 106,700) or more.
How much money does the average Canadian retire with? Data from Statistics Canada tells us that Canadians in economic families between the ages of 55 and 64 have roughly $645,599 in retirement savings and $163,600 in financial savings. That would come out to a total of $809,100 saved for retirement.
With a portfolio value of $1.3 million or higher, that's plenty to spend $5,000 per month from age 50 to age 95, increasing spending by 3% inflation for sure.
Government retirement benefits
The main government source is the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), which pays out based on your lifetime contributions. * For 2024, the maximum benefit for someone retiring at age 65 is $1,364.60 per month, although the average payout is actually much lower, at $831.92 per month.
The average American spends $4,345 per month in retirement, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's $52,141 per year. Retirement planning means making sure you can afford your lifestyle after you stop working.
To be considered wealthy at age 65 or older, you need a household net worth of $3.2 million. That's according to finance expert Geoffrey Schmidt, CPA, who used data from the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF).
The report found the Americas are home to nearly 43 per cent of the world's millionaires, although this is most concentrated in the U.S., which boasts almost 22 million millionaires, compared to Canada, which has just under two million millionaires.
Your net worth is what you own minus what you owe. It's the total value of all your assets—including your house, cars, investments and cash—minus your liabilities (things like credit card debt, student loans, and what you still owe on your mortgage).
It's generally the rule of thumb that you will need 70 to 80% of your current salary to maintain a similar lifestyle in retirement. You should also consider economic conditions such as inflation, which has been 2% per year in recent years, as well as the 2% increase in goods and services.
According to estimates based on the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, a mere 3.2% of retirees have over $1 million in their retirement accounts. The number of those with $2 million or more is even smaller, falling somewhere between this 3.2% and the 0.1% who have $5 million or more saved.
In 2022, 22.6 percent of the Canadian population had an annual income of 100,000 Canadian dollars or more.
The ideal monthly retirement income for a couple differs for everyone. It depends on your personal preferences, past accomplishments, and retirement plans. Some valuable perspective can be found in the 2022 US Census Bureau's median income for couples 65 and over: $76,490 annually or about $6,374 monthly.
The $1,000 per month rule is designed to help you estimate the amount of savings required to generate a steady monthly income during retirement. According to this rule, for every $240,000 you save, you can withdraw $1,000 per month if you stick to a 5% annual withdrawal rate.