Canada’s baby boomers are growing increasingly concerned about affording their retirement years.

According to a report released Thursday by Royal Bank of Canada the average boomer is $275,000 shy of the amount they want to have saved for their retirement.

As a result, many are adjusting their expectations for their golden years.

Among the 900 Canadians aged 50 and over with investible assets worth $100,000 or more surveyed by RBC, 52 per cent plan to downsize or move once they retire if they need more income. An additional 41 per cent intend to keep working after their retirement.

“When you peel back the layers, many boomers worry about their savings shortfall because they just don’t know where to start,” Rick Lowes, RBC’s vice-president of retirement strategy, said in a release.

“The best approach is to start with expectations including: the lifestyle you hope to lead in retirement, retirement income options, and then build a plan to get you there.”

According to the survey, baby boomers with fewer assets were even farther away from their retirement saving goals. Boomers with less than $100,000 in investable assets report they think they will need to save an average of $574,000 to retire and – as a result – are more than $500,000 away from their goal.

An additional 21 per cent are relying on an expected inheritance to buffer their income once their working lives come to an end, while 22 per cent of respondents admitted to not even having a plan yet.

Respondents from Alberta and Ontario had the highest estimates of how much they’d need to retire, with expected coffers of $1.1 million and $1.01 million, respectively. However, both provinces ranked behind only Quebec in the percentage of respondents that did not expected to work after retirement (50 per cent in Ontario, 47 per cent in Alberta).

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