What does retirement mean to you?

What does retirement mean to you? Is it spending winters in a warm and sunny location, hanging with your grandkids or traveling the world? Do you plan to stay in your home or will you downsize? What financial legacy do you want to leave behind? These are some of the basic questions financial planner Kelly Ho says we should all be asking ourselves about retirement.

“For my clients, we do it once a year to make sure they remain on track. And that way we can also adjust savings amounts based on on potential salary or revenue increases and make sure that the plan is tracking along as it should.”

Ho says each household is unique and that means their savings goals will vary too. She criticizes financial institutions that put out definitive numbers indicating what the average person needs to retire.

“I think it creates anxiety because everyone has different lifestyles. You and I probably have different outlooks on what we want our retirement to look like. So to give us a number and saying that’s what we should work towards, I don’t think that makes any sense.”

Her best advice is to imagine what your retirement will look like. From there, you can estimate how much that vision would cost. Then use a retirement planning calculator to determine how far you are from that goal. There’s an excellent planning calculator on the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada‘s website. Using your current savings habits, including if you have your pension earnings, it forecasts how much income you’re on track to receive in retirement. These behaviors really do make a difference and whatever we can do even short, medium or longer term makes a difference.

CBC RADIO ONE
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 24, 2026