Besides job loss, the most common worry among Canadians grappling with this economic downturn is its impact on their retirement savings. Will they be able to retire when they planned to? Will they enjoy the retirement lifestyle they planned for? These questions have taken on a new level of urgency.

I’ve often thought that our perspective on retirement planning is driven more by age than people realize. By this I do not mean how close we are to retirement (although that is obviously a factor), I mean to what extent we identify with baby boomers and their worldview.

I was born in December 1966. According to demographic commentators like Dr. David Foot of the University of Toronto, that was the last month of the last year of the baby boom. That puts me squarely in the so-called Generation-X category.

I say “so-called” of course because, as a Gen-Xer, I resist labels.

From my admittedly comfortable point of view, Canadian boomers have had a pretty good run over the years. Culturally, our society has bent to their preferences time and time again. (There’s a reason 40-year-old pop songs have been elevated to the status of “classic rock.”) Financially, they’ve benefited from an economy that seemed to grow endlessly for most of their adult lives.

In terms of retirement planning, this understandably led to great expectations of an early, wealthy retirement.

On the other hand, to have been born in the ‘60s; and to have entered the professional workforce in the late ‘80s led me to a different conclusion about retirement. The idea that I will stop working at 65 feels arbitrary and, frankly, unnecessary. It always has. Maybe it’s because I love my job, but if I do achieve a level of financial independence sometime in the future, I think I’ll take advantage by working on what I care about most. And that’s not golf.

None of this is meant to be critical of baby boomers, by the way. If you can afford to retire in your 50s, and that makes you happy, then count me among your admirers.

But here’s where the story gets interesting. Many Canadians, boomers included, have begun to step back from early retirement plans.

Sun Life Financial commissioned research on this topic at the end of last year. The Unretirement Index found that only 30% of Canadians expect to retire before 65. It was the first year our Canadian organization had done this research, so there is no benchmark to compare that to. The study also found, however, that 45% of Canadians expect to work longer than they had originally expected.

Surprisingly, this shift is only partly a result of the downturn. The two most-often cited reasons for delaying retirement were “to stay mentally active” (91%) and “I enjoy my job or career” (86%). Other popular answers were “to earn enough money to live well” (79%) and “to earn enough money to pay basic living expenses” (68%)

Maybe Jeff Immelt of General Electric is right: we are experiencing an attitude reset. Will that extend to Canadians and their retirement dreams? Stay tuned.