She’s 34 and wants to retire at 65 with $70,000 a year. Can she?

A 34-year-old looks down the road to age 65, wants a comfortable income for life, and runs some rough math that spits out an intimidating number. This piece is a good reminder of how easily back-of-the-envelope planning can scare someone off course. The reader is already a steady saver with a long runway ahead, and the real question is whether her current pace actually gets her there. Allan unpacks what the quick estimate left out, chiefly the government benefits that arrive later, and shows how a proper plan with sensible assumptions about inflation and returns paints a far calmer picture. The lesson that carries beyond this one case is that decades of compounding and a healthy savings habit do a lot of heavy lifting, and that CPP and OAS fill a meaningful slice of the gap. It's most useful for younger savers second-guessing whether they're behind.