Canadians Talk About Their RRSPs And Retirement Savings Plans

Toronto, ON- According to a recent Ipsos Reid RBC survey released today, retirement savings is an issue of major priority for most Canadians, as the largest percentage (38%) point to "retirement savings" when asked what are their biggest financial priorities for them right now, while issues like making "regular payments to reduce debt" (28%) and "just trying to keep their head above water" (27%) trail further back on their priority list.

Evidence that Canadians are getting serious about their retirement savings is further strengthened by the fact that, on average, Canadian RRSP holders say they are planning to contribute $5,700 to their RRSP for the 2005 tax year - an increase of $140 over what Canadians said they were going to contribute to their RRSP in 2004 ($5,560), and nearly double the amount Canadians contributed in 1993 ($2,866).

And, nearly half of Canadians (45%) have contributed to, or plan to contribute to, an RRSP this year.

Further, while the average current market value of Canadians RRSPs sits at $61,656, down slightly from last year, it is up very substantially from 2001, when the average value sat at $50,662.

Today, 66% of Canadians have a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) - essentially unchanged from the 65% who had an RRSP last year

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid/RBC poll conducted from November 11th to November 21st, 2005. For the survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 1250 adult Canadian was interviewed by telephone. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within 1772.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult Canadian population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to the 2001 Census data. Please open the attached PDF to view the factum and detailed tables.

For more information on this news release, please contact:
Ray Kong
Ipsos Reid
(416) 324-2106
[email protected]