Most Canadians don't plan to retire: survey

What used to be called retirement will be just another day at the office for more than a third of Canadians, who say they'll need to keep working to pay the bills, a survey suggests.

The survey conducted by Harris/Decima on behalf of Scotiabank indicates nearly 70 per cent of Canadians plan to work after retirement.

Peoplecited different reasons for staying in the workforce. Seventy-two per cent said they want to remain mentally active, and 57 per cent want to stay socially active. Thirty-eight per cent of those surveyed said they'll be working out of financial necessity.

Five per cent of respondents said they are counting on a lottery win to see them through their retirement years.

Three-quarters of those who plan to retirefully from the workforce said they have been saving for about15 years. More than half of these people said they have savedless than$20,000 in the past five years.

"While there's no magic number that Canadians should be aiming for when saving for retirement, it's important that Canadians are realistic about how they plan to spend their retirement and how much it will cost," said Gillian Riley of Scotiabank.

The Harris/Decimapoll consisted of 1,011online surveys completed between Oct. 14 and 25, the results of which were then weighted by region, age and gender. Theresults do not have a traditional "margin of error" becauserespondents were drawn from a pool of existing Harris/Decima panel members and thusnot based on a probability sample.