Manon Breton-Couture at her home in Montreal on Jan. 30.Lisa Milosavljevic/The Globe and Mail
When Manon Breton-Couture, 52, retired last December, she expected to feel happy. After all, she had achieved something that most people don’t: Retiring more than a decade earlier than the average Canadian.
Instead, she felt the opposite.
“I feel guilty because my parents still work,” she said.
While she is enjoying slow mornings with coffee in hand, Ms. Breton-Couture’s mother, 72, is working as a crossing guard in the cold in Laval, Que. Her 79-year-old father still sells mattresses in Quebec City.
“The feeling of shame was very strong,” the former nurse said. “I didn’t feel like celebrating at all.”
Ms. Breton-Couture is part of a small group of Canadians who have managed to retire before their parents. Following the tenets of the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement, they’ve been able to save enough to walk away from work – yet their parents are still punching the clock.
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With the average retirement age in Canada at 65.3 in 2024, according to Statistics Canada, it’s uncommon for a child to be able to retire before their parents. Marlene Buxton, a certified financial planner and owner of Buxton Financial for Retirement, estimates that only 2 per cent of her clients fit the bill.
But for those select few who do, she’s noticed the extra weight on their shoulders.
“It doesn’t follow the path we normally would think would happen,” she said, referring to the conventional life stages: get an education, work, build a career, retire at 65. Instead of celebrating their financial success, she said many early retirees feel bad that they’re in a better situation than their parents.
But she believes that shouldn’t be the case. “Why do people have to justify that they’re financially independent at a younger age?” she said. “They shouldn’t have to. They should be happy and pleased with that and not have it be a negative thing,” she said.
Ms. Breton-Couture said she watched her parents overspend her whole life, struggling through financial setbacks.
There were times when there was “no food in the fridge because there was no money,” she said. “I think that’s the reason why I saved from a very early age.”
By 27, she had set a goal: accumulate $1-million by retirement. She checked that off by 45. By February, 2024, she had $2-million.
She knew it was time to step away from work – that was the easy part. But telling her parents? She couldn’t even say the word “retire” and instead told them she was just taking a break, knowing full well she wasn’t going back to work.
Despite her financial independence, she remains deeply involved in her parents’ finances. Ms. Breton-Couture bought a home for her father and paid off his debt. She and her brother also told her mother that they would pay off her car.
Still, setting boundaries is crucial, Ms. Buxton advises. She says that when you become an adult, “your finances should be separate from your family members'.”
Ms. Buxton also warns against over-giving, which can sometimes enable poor financial habits rather than truly helping. “[Parents] should be funding their retirement with their own resources and not relying on their children’s money to support them.”
She encourages her clients to help their parents help themselves.
Jash Koradia, who retired from BMO in January at age 34, still sends money home to his parents in India. He is currently working on a passion project but has saved enough to never have to work again, he said.
Beyond the financial support he provides his parents, he’s also made a point of helping them understand how he achieved his own financial independence.
That meant spending about a month having multiple hour-long conversations with them after announcing he was leaving his job – a decision that initially shocked them.
“I feel like it’s that financial literacy bit,” Mr. Koradia said.
Over time, these discussions not only eased his parents' concerns but also opened the door for him to assist his parents with their own finances. Now, he helps his father, who still works in corporate finance, track his money and find ways to increase his income.
Ms. Breton-Couture isn’t just supporting her parents financially – she’s also teaching them. Her mother has become curious about investing, and for the first time, they’re having open conversations about money – something that was never discussed during her childhood.
Flynn and Tanessa Flores with their two daughters in Panama.Supplied
For Flynn and Tanessa Flores, a couple who built enough passive income to retire in their mid-30s, reaching the point where they could offer financial guidance to their parents took some time.
Both have parents in their 60s who are still working. Ms. Flores’s father works in construction in B.C. Mr. Flores’s parents, who immigrated with him from the Philippines, work government jobs.
Mr. Flores’s parents struggled to understand why he would leave his job at a young age.
“His dad moved them here for the great pension, the opportunities, the job, the health benefits – what they didn’t have in the Philippines,” Ms. Flores said.
She had to grapple with her own emotions of retiring before her father, too.
“He’s out there at six in the morning, cold. He’s done hard labour and here I am so much younger, not having to work,” Ms. Flores said.
She constantly questioned herself: “How do you outearn your dad?”
While that guilt weighed heavily on her at first, it became lighter once Ms. Flores’s parents came to her asking for investing advice, which she was happy to give.
For the Floreses, their focus is now on the next generation. Ms. Flores will often say to her four-year-old daughter: “We’ve done our job if you’re smarter than we are. I want you teaching me something one day.”
