Many See No Need To "Retire" Their Debt Before They Retire From Work

Toronto, ON -- A new Ipsos Reid survey conducted on behalf of RBC, reveals that many Canadians are receptive to the idea of retiring with debt and do not think they need to "retire" their debts before they themselves can retire from work.

In fact, half (48%) are of the opinion that it is not essential to be debt free in order to retire: 33% say it is "important, but not completely necessary", 11% believe it is "nice to have, but not that important", and 4% feel it's "not really important at all".

One in three retired Canadians (33%) are currently in debt - with an average debt load of $35,500. Most of those who are retired with debt have a debt-load of less than $20,000(57%), but, one in seven (14%) have debts in excess of $100,000.

Further, among those retired with debt, four in ten (44%) say that they never planned on paying off their debt before they retired. And half (51%) decided to take on debt after they were retired -- a further one in ten (11%) took on debt before and after retirement

Not surprisingly then, one in five retired Canadians (20%) currently supplements their income by working part-time, by occasionally working, or by taking on contract jobs from time to time. Those who are retired with debts are more likely to work occasionally than are those who do not have debts (35% vs. 13%).

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.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:

John Wright
Senior Vice-President
Ipsos-Reid Public Affairs
(416) 324-2900