Too busy to save
Like many of us, Cindy Oxenbury was far too busy in her twenties and thirties to think much about saving for retirement. Between work, marriage, becoming a mother, then facing divorce, she had contributed to RRSPs here and there, but was as far away from having a real strategy as she was from her 65th birthday. And when she decided to pursue her MBA in 2000, the soon-to-be-single-again Oxenbury dipped into what little she had saved to pay for tuition and University of British Columbia student housing.
Although confident her management degree would help her build a comfortable life for herself and her now teenage son, those first months on her own were tough. “I could barely get through a day, never mind think about the future at that point,” Oxenbury recalls.
Now 43 and in a well-paying senior management job in Vancouver, Oxenbury would like her golden years to arrive sooner than later. So with the help of a financial advisor, she has seriously ramped up contributions to both her employer’s pension plan and her individual RRSP. But can she save enough to afford the retirement she wants, and still have enough left over to enjoy her life today?
The savings hurdles that women face
It’s among the toughest financial challenges facing Canadian women. Although we have more money in retirement than ever before, Statistics Canada reports that women aged 65 to 69 are living on just 61 cents for every dollar of retirement income their male counterparts enjoy. Why the disparity? It certainly isn’t that men are better savers than women, but that women often have fewer opportunities to build a retirement nest egg. We’re more likely to take time out of the workforce to raise children, and more likely to work part-time or in other jobs that don’t come with an employer pension plan. Also, we tend to end our careers earlier — sometimes to accompany an older partner into retirement — and live longer, so our savings need to see us through more years than a man’s.
Especially for single women, finding money to sock away at the end of every month can seem like mission impossible. Then come the 2 a.m. cold sweats: How in the world can I come up with $1 million by the time I turn 65?
