Canadians are putting off long-term goals like buying a home or saving for retirement in order to keep up with the high cost of living, data suggests.
A new report from Willful, a Canadian online estate planning platform, shows how a large share of Canadians who say they are putting off those plans point the finger at the economy.
“The study is the incongruity between intention and action. We all intend to check these financial items off our list and we don’t,” says Erin Bury, co-founder and CEO at Willful.
“And sometimes that’s because of feasibility, because we simply just don’t have the means to do so, like the money to put into that RESP.”
The Angus Reid survey conducted by Willful sampled over 1,500 Canadians in early October 2025, asking about their financial optimism compared to the same period in 2024 when the survey first started.
More than half of respondents (58 per cent) said the state of the economy forced them to delay major milestones this year.
Polling done by Ipsos earlier this year also showed that inflation and the cost of living were the top concerns for Canadians, following similar results over recent years.
Bury says some of these financial goals and milestones include saving for the future, paying off debt, creating a will, getting married, and buying a home or a vehicle.
Federal government documents prepared for Housing Minister Gregor Robertson in September cited how lower-income households were struggling with a lack of affordable housing. In addition, middle-class Canadians who intended to purchase a home were renting for longer than anticipated.
High prices for goods and services also weigh on household budgets, which may mean less money to put aside for savings and milestones like buying a home, raising children and saving for retirement.
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Nearly half of respondents (46 per cent) said they had to dip into their savings to keep up with daily expenses, which puts those goals further out of reach.
When asked to rate their financial optimism, survey respondents gave an overall score of 46 per cent, which is down from 52 per cent in 2025.
“Last year at this time we were talking a lot about inflation and how high interest rates were, whereas fast forward a year and we’re talking more about mortgage renewals and job market uncertainty and the impact of tariffs. Not just tangibly on day-to-day costs, but also just this threat of how they may impact our finances in the future,” says Bury.
“Some of these pressures have been alleviated. We saw the Bank of Canada drop interest rates (on Wednesday), so they’re much lower than they were at this time last year, but new pressures have emerged in their place.”
In September 2024, the Bank of Canada’s benchmark for interest rates was 4.25 per cent, and now sits at 2.25 per cent after Wednesday’s rate announcement. This means some households are able to afford more day-to-day costs because they may be paying less interest on their mortgages and other loans.
The savings may only be so much when other cost pressures creep into household budgets, which can make it harder to plan and save up for the future.
Nearly a third of the survey’s respondents (31 per cent) said that lowered interest rates have not helped their ability to manage debt, as well as take out new loans.
“I think these rate cuts certainly help if you have a financial instrument that allows you to benefit from it. Will it help a lot? Well, it depends on the size of that line of product. You might be looking at saving $5 next month. You might be looking at a saving a lot more,” says Bury.
“If a rate cut helps you, it may only help nominally, or it may not at all, because you may not have a variable rate mortgage or a line of credit that is immediately positively impacted by that.”
Shopping around and pooling resources and memberships to save on day-to-day costs can help with budgeting, but Bury stresses the larger-ticket items like mortgages and vehicle loans are what are more of a struggle to afford.
“There’s no avoiding some of the day-to-day costs. When I look at the things on my own grocery list, like diapers, I have to get diapers, right? So there’s nothing to do other than shopping around, or my in-laws have a Costco subscription — there are all those tips,” says Bury.
“But when we look at them major items in our budgets like mortgages and car payments, these are the ones that are a struggle to lower, especially in the context of all of these mortgage renewals. And that’s why there’s such a pressure on carving out the ability to save for the future.”
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