If you’ve found yourself tossing and turning at 3 a.m., worrying about your retirement some day, slide over and make room for the rest of us.

The fact is, you’re not alone.

Whether fears revolve around money, or your status once you’ve left a career, many people are anxious.

“Absolutely, they are,” says Bob Donlevy, a Calgary financial and retirement planning counsellor associated with William M. Mercer Limited.

Mike Sturk, Business Edge
Retirement counsellor Bob Donlevy says your spending habits today can help predict the future.

“When people attend our workshops, their first expectation coming in is that they are going to walk away feeling even more miserable than they already are.”

Understanding those assumptions, and before people have even warmed their seats, Donlevy debunks a few myths.

Do we need millions of dollars to retire? No, says Donlevy. Will the wave of retiring baby boomers bankrupt the Canada Pension Plan? Highly unlikely, he adds.

People worry about retirement because it is a mystery, says Donlevy. We haven’t retired before, and many of us have worked so hard at our daily lives we haven’t taken the time to plan for the future.

Or have we?

“Most people discover they’re not badly off at all,” says Donlevy, who has 30 years of financial experience at William Mercer, and has served as a lecturer at the University of Calgary and as a member of the Alberta Securities Commission.

There are two aspects to retirement: the financial question of whether there is enough income to retire on; and the lifestyle, or psychological, question of what our self-vision is.

Jobs provide people with identities, and once we retire, people will look at us differently.

“We become ‘seniors’ or ‘pensioners’ — those can be pretty negative, debilitating labels.”

Donlevy works with a number of companies that are keen to provide their employees with the tools to make sound financial decisions.

It’s a growing trend he finds heartening.

At the same time, in tandem with a partner, he delivers about 40 two-day workshops across the country to individuals and their spouses. Donlevy deals with the economic side, while retired Calgary separate school principal Jack Driscoll focuses on lifestyle issues.

Financially, says Donlevy, if people have lived within their means and attacked debt, such as mortgages, they have likely put themselves into a pattern that will set them up for a comfortable retirement.

“Everyone’s needs will be different. But if we know how you spend now, we can predict the future,” he says.

“You’ve set a pattern that isn’t going to change when you retire.”

In order to understand their financial futures, Donlevy asks people to imagine two vessels, or barrels, that have to be filled for retirement.

One vessel contains assets — a home (hopefully paid off), an RRSP and perhaps some unsheltered savings.

The second vessel represents the money coming in after retirement. That revenue stream may include a company pension, CPP and Old Age Security, and perhaps a spousal pension and CPP earnings as well.

Once a person turns 65 he or she can be sure the government is going to provide a foundation, says Donlevy. Someone who has been a full-time employee contributing to CPP, in today’s dollars, would receive $750 per month. OAS is currently $430 per month.

People worrying about the CPP going bankrupt should understand that Canada has always been generous to its seniors, says Donlevy.

“The reality is we’ll always likely have something like the CPP. Every industrial country has something comparable. Canada is not going to be out of step.”

If there are apparent financial shortfalls, retirees can rely on their assets. They might downsize their home, move to a smaller, less expensive community or take a part-time job.

Part-time work is becoming an accepted norm that tops up the cash level, but also keeps the mind nimble, says Donlevy.

He enjoys telling the story of a retired executive who took a job on a grounds crew at a golf course.

“Some people consider that demeaning, but he loved it. He didn’t have the meetings, the office politics, and took pride in the job he’d done, mowing a beautiful green lawn.”

Both Donlevy and Driscoll say they are educators, helping people use tools to take control of their future.

“Bob’s telling people how to set up their estate planning and I’m telling them to live life, spend all that money,” laughs Driscoll, who retired from the Catholic school system eight years ago.

Driscoll preaches that people who enter retirement with a good attitude will have wonderful retirements. The reverse is also true.

Not everyone, however, wants to hear his entire message.

A proponent of a healthy lifestyle, he says too many people he encounters in workshops are smokers and/or obese.

“All the money in the world isn’t going to do you any good,” he tells them. “If you don’t have your health, you’re not going to last long anyway.”

Driscoll backs up his talk with sobering statistics that show many retirees die soon after retirement.

“I tell them that the lifestyle habits they have now will carry on into retirement. I ask them if they are happy with how they live. If not, get doing something about it.”

As facilitators, Donlevy and Driscoll say they point people in the right direction, help them to understand what information is available and also get people talking to each other – sharing their dreams and experiences.

It provides a vision and a road map. And once people map a route, they tend to sleep easier.