Building a nest egg not a top priority for many Canadians

The opening comment to the article, "Growing up, our grandparents and parents always stressed the importance of building that all-important nest egg to have a little something for a rainy day." said it all. I was a war baby. My grandparents lived through the Great Depression and my parents were certainly affected by the dirty thirties so believe me, I heard plenty about it. Later as an 18 or19 year old, my girlfriend at the time took me to visit her grandparents who lived in a one room apartment above a store in downtown Hamilton. I can still see that room in my mind's eye. It was dark and had a curtain dividing the sleeping area from the living area. The grandfather was sharpening a razor blade in a water glass to extend its life. That scared me, I was horrified and knew I could never, ever live that way. Today, as a senior, I am not wealthy but we are mortgage free, have some savings and live a pretty good life. Perhaps today's youth need to see what I saw so many years ago.

Today's youth needs to do what the post war generation did.
Drop out of highschool, take up smoking / buying a daily newspaper and get good paying secure jobs with local manufacturers while saving for a secure retirement safe in the knowledge that it will be there for them when they retire while raising their families in houses that one of the parents can afford allowing the other to stay home with the children.
Today's young people have parents that left them with a country with little debt, free post secondary education, a great manufacturing base, good jobs for Canadian born men and a small, streamlined corruption free government that is the envy of the world. Right? Right???
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Sorry folks but todays young people have had their future incomes mortgaged and their inheritence stolen and shipped to Mexico etc, and their political leaders paid for by the highest bidder or crack dealer.
Might as well get blitzed on drugs because your degree will only get you a job at Starbucks who'll refuse to pay the taxes required for a proper civil society.
Welcome to the society left to you by those who inherited and trashed a nation their forefathers worked to hard to make the envy of the world.

Well Sam - you certainly seem to think you know what the previous generation's youth was like compared to yours, and blame your situation on their wanton lifestyle. Guess I must have missed that. I am a late boomer who used to live on 1 hockey stick a year (when it broke, seasons over - unless I was lucky enough to be able to nail it back together), couldnt play much organized sports (too $$$), used to get 1 pair of new jeans every year, AFTER I got to high school(everything else but underwear and shoes was patched/handmedowns), and lost any family allowance at 15(the $10/month I got in grade 9 had to buy my bus tix and the odd lunch plus my amusements). I delivered papers when I was 8, had my own routes when I was 10, sold popcorn and peanuts at Jr A and Argo games to be able to see sports (too $$$ again), worked midnights 2 nights a week at a newspaper in HS/univ and paid my own tuition and books. Free school? Hahaha Someone sold you a good one there. Couldnt afford anything like sports or concert tix. Had to listen to hockey, baseball, and football on the hand-held radio as the TV (B&W till I was 13) was the parents domain, and mine werent sports fans at all. Unemployment was atrocious in the mid-late 70s, so finding a job anywhere (where did you say all those good paying mfg jobs were?) as a teen needed connections, and boy did one work if they were able to find one - physical labour in non-A/C, and safety measures were ignored/unenforced, and when the boss said jump, you didnt ask "how high?", you just jumped as high as you could and hoped it was good enough. Hitchhiked to school (or walked the 2 miles) to save bus $$, went to exactly 3 school dances/proms/concerts during 5 yrs of High school as I had to work Fri nights (8pm-4am) and then walk home 5 miles from the night bus terminal. In lousy weather, I was lucky enough to get a guy to sometimes drop me off so it was only 3 miles.
You want that life? You think you could have cut it back then? I dont cuz your whining post tells me you would have been eaten up by the men in those days in factories and such.
And BTW, ironically, we used to blame the previous generation too, you know, the guys who were in WWII and all, until we grew up and saw that life didnt owe us a damn thing and get used to it.
And Im lucky - yeah lucky. I spent 30 years in factory conditions for the most part which wasnt lucky, but I didnt have a divorce which robbed me of 50%+ of my life savings +pension, didnt get terribly ill til into my 60's, and am still alive, unlike so many of my peers/relatives. And if you are lucky enough to last into your 60's, you will probably find that YOUR generation isnt all that bad off at all, and that the next gen will blame YOU for their situation, all the time you knowing you are basically powerless against "the system".
BTW, I stayed in a factory job despite having 2 degrees (mgmnt for last 10 yrs) because I made more $$ there than others in my grad class(es) who were lucky enough to find jobs with BBA's and MBA's. Mine was also bilingual (BBA), but it was who you knew + the degree that got the jobs. Yah I hear yah about the Starbucks thingy, but I had higher education than ANYBODY in our entire organization except those on the Board and Im ok.
But I needed you back then I guess to show me where all these available great-paying mfg jobs were, where the free education was, and to tell my parents to leave me an inheritance worth more than a trip to Cuba for 4. Trashed a nation? Too busy trying to survive, and blaming it on OUR parents/gp for the state of Canada back then, the ones you refer to as the "envy of the world". LoL Canada the envy of the world? HAHAHA Was told the same thing as a youth. Its not, now or in my time either. Good country, but not even close to the envy of the world. If its so great, why does 98% of those who leave this country to live elsewhere, stay living elsewhere? And how dare you assume we didnt "work hard" - you wouldnt/couldnt do what we had to do in our teens/20's is my bet - but you can whine a lot better than most of us were allowed to.

Sam, it's disappointing that you are so harsh and judgmental - I am one of those people and have been working since I was 14 years of age, even before that I was collecting pop and beer bottles and cashing them in for spending money. I am in agreement with TC, have worked all my life.

Thanks to me working my husband has enjoyed ten years of leisure working and golfing during the summer - this is the first time he's had to actively work because I lost my job a few months ago.

Sam you need to understand that most of current financial problems are due to over taxation of the working class and giving job preference to everyone except natural born Canadians. Our government and banks have put us in this position and employers have blindly followed like sheep off of a cliff.

The government taxes the middle income earners to death while the high income earners find creative ways to hide their wealth so that they don't have to pay taxes. We are further gouged by the banks and grocery stores - no matter how hard we try to get back on our feet the harder it becomes.

People need to push back where taxes and employment are concerned - we've allowed ourselves to be led too long now we need to stand up for ourselves. The government has too much control and it favours minorities and immigrants over those who were born here.

A lot of the money accumulated by some age groups was achieved through inflation, not because they saved more. If you bought farm land or a house and inflation hit after you bought it all of a sudden your rich and not because you saved it, it's because the next generation is paying for it. A lot of it comes down to when you start purchasing assets ( before or after an inflation hike)

I grew up with very frugal parents who immigrated from Holland to Canada in the late 40's. I would admit that I am not nearly as frugal as they are but I did learn a thing about paying off bills, not extending credit cards and saving money each and every month from them.

I may be one of the fortunate ones at my age (41) but my wife and I have paid off our 400,000 home already 2 years ago and we purchased a cottage on a lake 3 years ago that will be paid off in about 5 years. We also have stacked away monthly savings each month to the point that we now have just over 300k in a monthly savings account. Yes you heard me, a saving account that pays only about 2.5% a year, but it is going up quite rapidly now. My dad told me to never invest in the stock market or mutuals as the only people who make money in the stock market control the stock market and everyone else loses their shirt. I have friends at work who have invested in the stock market in the late 90's and most of them only have 70% of the money they have invested to their name now 15 years later. I invested in very low interest bearing GIC's and savings account but I have more than double my money. What does that say for the stock market ?

The main reason most of us can't start a nest egg is we are taxed to death in Canada. I have worked all my life and when i look at the money I have after federal and provincial income tax, I know I will have to pay an additional 13 % on whatever I buy plus there are all the hidden taxes we don't see.

There are no jobs for our youth, and for every nickel they we make the government takes 3 cents to cover their partying and excessive lifestyle. Politicians and big business live of the "taxpayers" dime, not their own incomes.

If you have nothing in your pocket, what do you have to save, "nothing".

I blame TFW program abuse, tax evaders, and greedy people at that top that need to make more in one year than it would take to provide leprosy medication to the entire African nation and put an end to leprosy altogether. The wealthy are glutton's that do not give a damn for the rest of humanity, or care how their actions are killing millions each year.

Chris,

On the Internet you can be anything you want to be and come up with any story. The reality is different. Please, spare us your fake comments. They are not appreciated.
Coming on the forum to brag about your finance shows that you are unsecure and arrogant. Not to mention frustrated.

proponents of the current system say it works well and governments should focus on enhancing it rather replacing it.
U.S. regulators declined to comment on Canada's regime but James J. Angel a capital markets professor at Georgetown University warned against copying what he called the "dysfunctional" Security, which failed to prevent fraud " Ponzi schemes or full-blown market crises as RBC Stocks with no clear writing and fraudulent Bankers as Bernie from a branch in Calgary in 2010.

Canadian Banks are cash reach from free money, from banking accounts of hard working Canadian People, the Tax payers. clearly the all money belongs only to the Banks and not to the ones they belongs to. I am glad we going to have new boss for Canadian banks and perhaps to have some interest on our investments to retire and have some money to leave as humans.