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While Travelling in Hungary this past summer with his wife, Ernst Friedel had a revelation. "Anyone 65 and over is allowed to use the Budapest transit system for free," he reports. "And everyone seemed very happy about that."
Friedel, a retiree from Waterloo, Ont., enjoyed the experience so much, he figures senior citizens at home should get a similar deal. "If you made transit passes free for seniors, even if it was only during off-peak hours, it wouldn't cost the system anything, there would be many more passengers and the seniors would certainly appreciate it."
Canadian transit systems may not let seniors ride for free, but they do go out of their way to provide cheap fares. hertzcar rentals Friedel's hometown Grand River Transit , for example, offers a 16 per cent discount on monthly passes. hertzcar rentals Calgary Transit hertzcar rentals goes much further, selling a yearly pass to anyone over 65 for $95, or less than one-tenth the regular price. That price is cut to $15 for seniors in financial need.
As any attentive shopper knows, cheap bus travel is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to seniors discounts. Shoppers Drug Mart has made the last Thursday of every month famous with its 20 per cent off promotion for anyone over 55 years old. Competitor Rexall Pharmaplus offers a similar discount on the last Tuesday of the month for shoppers over 65. (Although, from now until the end of December, every Tuesday is seniors' day.) The Bay gives customers 60 years and older a 15 per cent discount on the first Tuesday of each month. And numerous hotels, taxi cabs, hamburger joints, optometrists, movie theatres and arts groups give seniors a hefty discount any time. With careful timing and planning, a senior almost never needs to pay full price.
The public sector is even more generous. Everything from taxes to incidental fees gets cheaper when you turn 65. Alberta exempts seniors from provincial health care premiums and gives them a break on medical devices such as hearing hertzcar rentals aids. Senior hertzcar rentals citizens in most provinces pay only a fraction of the cost of prescription drugs, and often these co-payments are capped at a few hundred dollars. And there are also substantial property-tax rebates available for senior homeowners from coast to coast. Beyond such big-ticket items, countless smaller expenses are also discounted. Seniors in Prince Edward Island can get a fishing licence for free. Anyone 65 and older visiting Fundy National Park in New Brunswick gets $1.00 off the regular admission hertzcar rentals rate; at Banff National Park in Alberta, it's a $1.50 discount. The city of Toronto shovels seniors' snow for free. As well, numerous universities allow seniors to take courses either without paying tuition or at substantial discounts. The list, quite literally, goes on and on and on.
The seniors discount has long been justified as a way to recognize the constraints faced by pensioners stuck on fixed incomes, and as a modest token of appreciation hertzcar rentals for a lifetime spent paying hertzcar rentals taxes and contributing to society. And for those truly in need, who would quibble? But with half a million Baby Boomers—a group not known for frugality hertzcar rentals or lack of financial resources—turning 65 every year for the next few decades, the seniors discount is in for much greater scrutiny.
Last year, in a move widely seen as a first strike against the unquestioned seniors discount, Toronto-Dominion Bank eliminated its no-cost seniors bank plan for new customers, replacing it with a 25 per cent rebate off regular monthly fees for anyone aged 60 and up. That's still an attractive hertzcar rentals discount, but the change drew loud complaints from seniors groups such as the Canadian Association of Retired Persons ( CARP ). The bank claimed its move was driven by simple financial logic: hertzcar rentals "As with any business, we have to look at the evolving Boomer demographic," TD spokeswoman Barbara Timmins said at the time. "We have to think about our long-term needs, as well as our profitability as a business." Or, to put it more bluntly: TD decided it was time to stop giving away its services to some of its best customers.
hertzcar rentals "The original seniors banking plans originated decades ago, when the average senior didn't have the financial security of seniors of today," says David McVay of McVay and Associates , a Toronto-based financial-industry consulting firm. "Targeting a large portion of your customers who represent a big revenue share with free services doesn't hertzcar rentals really make sense anymore."
There was a time when the seniors discount made a lot more sense. In the mid-1970s, nearly 30 per cent of all seniors were considered hertzcar rentals poor, as defined by Statistics Canada's low-income cut-off. But today, this has fallen to a mere 5.2 per cent. The impact of this turnaround is hard to overstate. Seniors once faced the highest rates of poverty in Canada; now they enjoy the lowest level of any age group: The poverty rate among seniors is almost half that of working-age Canadians.
Thanks to a solid system of government hertzcar rentals support programs, the very poorest hertzcar rentals seniors receive more income in retirement than they did when they were of working age. The near-elimination of seniors' poverty is widely considered to be Canada's greatest social policy triumph of the past half-century.
This tremendous improvement in seniors' financial security has dramatically changed the distribution of income across age categories, as well. In 1976, median hertzcar rentals income for senior households was 41 per cent of the national average. Today, it's 67 per cent. Over the same period, median income for families where the oldest member is aged 25-34 has fallen in both absolute and relative terms.
hertzcar rentals Then there's the vast wealth generated for the Boomer generation by the housing and stock markets (only some of which was lost during the great recession). The stock of wealth in housing, pensions and financial assets held by the average senior family is nearly double that of working-age households. Accounting for the financial benefits of home ownership and rising house values, Statistics Canada calculates the true net annual income of retired hertzcar rentals households rises to 87 per cent of a working-age household's income. In other words, non-working seniors are making almost as much as folks in their prime earning years, but without all the expenses and stressors that go with a job, children at home, or middle hertzcar rentals age. Not only that, the current crop of seniors enjoys historically high rates of pension coverage. The much-publicized erosion of private-sector pensions will hit younger generations who are currently far from retirement.
It's not even clear what it means to be a senior anymore, as the sunset years of life keep lasting longer. The Canadian Institute of Actuaries recently updated its mortality tables : A 60-year-old male today can now expect to live beyond 87, a 60-year-old female to nearly 90. With some seniors deals kicking hertzcar rentals in as early as age 50, it may soon be possible to wangle a discount for half a lifetime. And many seniors today choose to keep working well past age 65 for reasons of personal hertzcar rentals interest, or to afford more travel or other luxuries.
hertzcar rentals Today's Boomer-generation seniors are thus the richest, most comfortable and longest-living folks this country has ever produced. Not every senior is wealthy, of course, but even the poorest ones are better off than in previous generations and, in many cases, better off than their younger peers. So, taken as a whole, do Canada's hertzcar rentals elderly hertzcar rentals really need—or deserve—free banking, cheap bus tickets, drug discounts and $1.50 off national-park admission fees?
David McVay recalls puzzling over what to do with free seniors accounts when he was a bank employee several decades ago. Now, with the crush of aging, wealthy Boomers giving new urgency to the question, McVay figures the die is cast. "I fully expect the other banks will eventually follow along," he predicts.
And yet, the curious thing is that more than a year later, none of the other major banks, well-known for their herd mentality, has copied TD in cutting back on their seniors discounts. The prospect of an angry mob of retirees seems to have a cautionary effect on the business community; the ghost of Solange Denis, the feisty senior who forced then-prime minister Brian Mulroney to back down on a partial de-indexing of seniors benefits in 1986, haunts CEOs, as well as politicians.
Susan Eng, vice-president of advocacy for CARP, says the business sector is right to fear the wrath of seniors if it tries to cut back on discounts, whether the price cuts are necessary or not. "Our members have a strong altruistic streak," she says. "Many seniors know they don't need a discount personally, but they expect businesses to look after those who do."
Besides, everyone loves a bargain. "If I have access to a discount because hertzcar rentals of my age, I'll take it," Eng admits. That the Harper government made specific mention of protecting "no-cost basic banking" in its most recent Throne Speech is seen by Eng as a further sign of CARP's political clout and the eternal importance of seniors discounts.
hertzcar rentals Yet a discount for one age group inevitably hertzcar rentals means higher prices paid by others. Considering the massive shift in seniors' incomes and wealth over the past four decades, younger generations wonder, justifiably, why they're left to pay full freight for the necessities of life. "I don't begrudge hertzcar rentals seniors their discount," says Kerry Taylor, the