How does a recession impact retirement savings?
During arecession, stocks and otherinvestmentscan drop in value as cautious investors sell or divest to protect their portfolio against losses.Market volatilitycan impact the performance of investments as well as retirement savings accounts.
How to manage your retirement savings during a recession
Early career
You may shift your financial priorities to deal with the immediate impacts of a recession, such as cutting back on non-essentials to ensure you can pay bills and cover everyday expenses, but it’s also important to try and not lose sight of your long-term goals.
You may have to re-evaluate orcreate a budgetto help you reduce your spending, and you may contribute less to yoursavingsas a result.
This could be helpful in the short-term, especially if you’re struggling. However, stopping contributions to yourretirement savingseven for a short time can have a big impact on how much you’ll have in your nest egg when you come to use it.
The money you invest will grow over time throughcompound interest; the less you save now, the less interest earned over time, which ultimately means less money in total when you reach retirement age.
When looking at your budget, if you feel you need to adjust to account for inflation, consider reducing your contributions to your personal savings and/or workplace savings plan instead of stopping them completely.
Mid-career
Ifinvestingis part of your financial plan for retirement, you could find that your portfolio is impacted by the stock market. Duringperiods of inflation, consumer confidence drops andinterest rates often rise, and both things can causestock market volatility.
Why is my registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) losing value?
If you have an RRSP, the money in it is invested. This means that if the stock market or real estate markets drop, the value of the RRSP may also lose value.
However, this may only be temporary; thestock market is cyclical, meaning it will go through both highs and lows.Making changes to your asset allocation during a low period could mean potentially missing out on gains when the prices recover. Instead, you may consider making consistent contributions even when markets have dropped, an investment strategy known as dollar-cost averaging, which can help you buy more shares at a lower price point.
Avoiding emotional investing and ensuring your portfolio is diversified can help you manage periods of uncertainty in the market.
Nearing retirement
If you’renearing retirement, you may want to weigh the pros and cons of waiting another year or 2 before stopping work.
On the upside, you could contribute more to your savings while the government takes measures to curb inflation and markets correct themselves. However, you may not want to continue working and maybe keen to start the next chapter of your life regardless of inflation.
Each situation is unique, and the picture of retirement looks different for everyone, so talking this decision through with your loved ones and or your advisor can help you make the best choice for you.
Already retired
If you’re already living on retirement income, there may be other things to consider when it comes to theimpact of inflation.
For example, you may already have a plan in place forhow long you want your retirement savings to last. That plan may have been based on receiving a set income each month to pay for set expenses.
However, periods of recession are often tied to rates of inflation. If your retirement income remains the same but your expenses suddenly start to rise due to inflation, you may find your money is not stretching as far as you hoped. You may need to re-examineyour retirement budgetand speak to your advisor to see where and if you can make changes.
If you’re continuing toinvest during your retirement, you should consider carrying out a portfolio review to make sure your investment allocations and risk levels remains aligned to your goals.
Other investment can react to inflation too, but the good news is, government pensions such as theCanada Pension Plan (CPP)/Quebec Pension Plan (QPP)andOld Age Security (OAS)are indexed to keep up with inflation. The CPP is adjusted every January while the OAS is adjusted each quarter.
While they may not match inflation exactly and may not be enough to live off on their own, these payments will increase as the price of living does to help retirees manage.
