Retired Canadians returning to work to pay bills

Nearly one-in-three retirees has rejoined the workforce

TORONTO (CP) — Nearly one-third of retired Canadians, or 30 per cent, have returned to work and the main reason is they misjudged how much the easy life would cost.

Two new surveys from ING Direct found that the divide between how much people saved, and how much they actually needed, was too wide to handle without a paycheque.

About 48 per cent of retired respondents to an online poll said they took another job because of financial reasons. Of those, 31 per cent returned to work full time.

Another online survey found that 33 per cent of respondents who went back to work said they hadn't saved enough money for retirement, while 31 per cent said they faced higher living costs than expected.

The surveys portray a notable disconnect between Canadians' expectations of life after the workforce and the reality of daily expenses.

ING Direct said that respondents wished they had found more ways to save for retirement, that they had started saving earlier and that they hadn't ``spent money so mindlessly.''

Both of the online surveys were conducted with about 1,000 randomly selected Canadian adults who were at least 55 years old and Angus Reid Forum panellists.

The polling industry's professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

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