How to plan for retirement in five or 10 years

When retirement is five or ten years off, the question shifts from someday to soon, and this piece lays out how to prepare for that window. Rather than naming a date, it turns the question around: figure out what you want to spend in retirement first, then see whether your pensions and savings can deliver it. The work involves understanding your real lifestyle costs today, drawing up net worth and cash-flow statements, and noticing how much of your current income actually goes to taxes, pension contributions and the mortgage rather than living. Once those work-related costs fall away, the picture changes. It also weighs how a workplace pension, CPP and OAS layer together. It's most relevant to someone mid-career, perhaps with a defined-benefit pension and a mortgage still to clear, starting to plan in earnest.