Money.ca
By Laura Boast
July 29th, 2026
Have Canadian boomers saved enough for retirement? It doesn’t seem like it…
The plan was supposed to work in one direction. Boomers would spend their working years saving, then eventually pass wealth down to their kids. However, for a growing number of Canadian families, the money is actually moving in the opposite direction, especially when it comes to caregiving later in life.
And the numbers suggest this isn’t just a handful of unlucky families. It’s a structural problem with how an entire generation approached retirement.
Nearly 3 out of 10 Canadians (29%) planning to retire in 2025 or 2026 expect to still be making mortgage payments after they leave the workforce. A decade earlier, only about half as many senior households carried a mortgage. As many homeowners tap home equity to cover bills or fund investments, mortgage balances among Canadians —aged 55 to 64— grew about 6% in the past year alone. Add in non-mortgage debt, credit cards, car loans and lines of credit, and the picture gets tighter.
