Living out beyond is for the young, too

I was listening to a national radio show this past weekend and one of the topics was on pensions: specifically, is there or is there not a crisis coming somewhere down the road.

Some say, yes, some, no. People aren’t saving enough, says one; the federal pension plan should be doubled in both contributions and benefits such that it covers 50% of the normal person’s expenses pre-retirement income versus the currently designed 25%, says another. And so on.

The point here isn’t about pensions, per se, but about the overall cost of living and whether young people, or anyone really, can afford to save enough for their pension when even just the downpayment on a house or apartment can be prohibitive.

Students can finish their student days with a large debt, taking years to pay it off, time that could otherwise be spent setting aside critical early dollars which, thanks to compounding interest, will form the basis for their pension cheques later on.

So, listening to the experts speak on the topic, articulate as they were, I was suddenly struck by their almost automatic assumption that the inability of people to set aside enough funds for their retirement was due to the high cost of living, and that the location of this living was in cities.

At one time, this could well be considered the normal case. Rural communities kept losing their young to the city. Education meant prosperity and the schools and the jobs were in the city. However, nowadays, and quite recently, really, I’d say that this paradigm is shifting (or am I fooling myself).

With wide availability of high-speed internet and wireless, most “knowledge” workers can plunk themselves down in smaller cities and towns, or even in a rural setting. (On our island there is fortunately a direct sight-line to the cell tower over on Vancouver Island.)

And, where these people land, their dollars will form part of the economic multiplier as they flow from person to business to person.

Giving up the high cost of urban housing can mean a lot more fiscal freedom for long-term things such as pension planning. Also, the costs and time of commuting are almost eliminated on a daily basis (but increased when heading to the city for a dose of restaurants and shows).

People tend to find, they say, a stronger sense of community and even know who their neighbours are (sometimes not a good thing; but perhaps that’s the city side of me coming out). I certainly don’t know mine here in Vancouver, but a couple of weeks ago we went for an evening walk on Hornby and had a chat with our neighbours-to-be over the fence. The two dogs – Kepler and Simon – sniffed each other.

From people we’ve talked to there (perhaps a biased group) there is an increasing sense of welcoming people (us), who might have been shunned as mere urban refugees or yuppie-cappuccino-drinking people with too much time and money on their hands (maybe there’s some truth to that).

Now, they can see a way to keep the school open and local business viable. There is less of a sense of wanting – as my father used to say – to close the bridge. Having found a bucolic setting, there can be a tendency to, umm, restrict it.

So, city versus country, working versus retirement, full house versus empty nest: perhaps there won’t be such a difference in the near future.