‘Why am I getting so little pension?’ Quebec woman turns to food bank, can’t make ends meet | Globalnews.ca
globalnews.ca
external-link
'When you see your grandma coming through the door, your great-aunt, that hits home and you realize everybody is affected,' the executive director of the West Island Mission said.

If she’s paid off her home, property taxes would be around $4,800 ($400/mo).

In fairness, no retired old woman is expected to live alone in a house big enough to warrant a $4800 property tax. The fact that she’s “only” paying $1200 in rent tells me that she’s not in an expensive area to start with.

The idea, or at least, the ideal, is to either downsize or move into a retirement home when you’re done working. If your mortgage is paid off, then you’d expect to make $400,000 - over $1,000,000 for any type of home.

But really, the thought that any person her age would need to struggle just looks bad on the country. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

Zorque
link
fedilink
105M

Doesn’t it say that $1,200 doesn’t cover her housing needs?

@n2burns@lemmy.ca
link
fedilink
8
edit-2
5M

Yup, the article suggests her rent is ~$1,700:

At $1,200 a month, her pension doesn’t even cover her housing needs.

“I’m short like $500 just for the rent,”

Ah, I missed understood that.

Does she not also get the Guaranteed Income Supplement? She certainly qualifies based on her age and income <$21,000 a year. That would get her an extra $1000 a month.

said she started collecting her pension when she was 60 but kept working until she was 65.

I might also be wrong about this, but doesn’t that majorly screw you over? To collect your pension before 65?

Yeah, I wish the article had more details about her situation. I don’t know when she’s talking about her “pension” if she’s talking about her total income, her QPP (maybe including her OAS & GIS?), her private pension, or something else.

I might also be wrong about this, but doesn’t that majorly screw you over? To collect your pension before 65?

This articles lays it out pretty well. It’s highly dependent on your personal situation, how long you think you’ll live. I do question her choice to start collecting at 60, but we don’t have enough info to judge if this was financially prudent, short-sighted, or just desperate.

Create a post

What’s going on Canada?



Communities


🍁 Meta

🗺️ Provinces / Territories

🏙️ Cities / Regions

🏒 Sports

Hockey

Football (NFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Football (CFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Universities

💵 Finance / Shopping

🗣️ Politics

🍁 Social & Culture

Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:

https://lemmy.ca


  • 1 user online
  • 140 users / day
  • 329 users / week
  • 680 users / month
  • 2.26K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 5.29K Posts
  • 47.7K Comments
  • Modlog