Every day, our news tells us how people die.
Not statistically but dramatically.
A shooting in the burbs or downtown at night.
A house fire in Oshawa.
A collision on the 401.
A stabbing in a subway station.
A plane crash.
An explosion.
A war.
Modern news culture is saturated with death, but almost always death as rupture: sudden, violent, improbable, and visually compelling.
Most of us do not believe we will die this way yet the constant repetition of sudden death subtly shapes how we think about our own futures. It encourages us to imagine death as interruption rather than as a certainty.
And that matters more than we realize when we make financial decisions about aging.
Nowhere is this more visible than in decisions around CPP and OAS.
Better off waiting
If we are not going to get the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), and even when we might be financially better off waiting, most Canadians take CPP early and OAS at 65.
Partly this reflects the ancient logic of the “bird in the hand.” A payment today feels more real than a larger payment tomorrow. Delayed gratification becomes especially difficult when the delay itself is tied to uncertainty about whether we will still be alive to take advantage.
But there is something deeper happening as well. When someone delays CPP or OAS, they are implicitly making a wager that they will live long enough to benefit from a larger payment.
And many people recoil from making that calculation explicitly.
We will discuss blood pressure, retirement savings, estate planning, and long-term care.
But we do not want to say: “I will probably live into my late 80s.”
Instead, many of us rely on informal mortality handicapping:
- “My father died young.”
- “You never know.”
- “I’d rather take it while I can.”
These statements feel prudent and emotionally grounded. But statistically, they are often weak planning tools. The irony is striking.
As a society, we increasingly trust actuarial science everywhere else:
- insurance
- pensions
- epidemiology
- public finance
Yet when it comes to our own lifespan, many of us abandon population statistics in favour of anecdote, intuition, and fear of regret.
And regret matters enormously here. People fear dying before they consider collecting enough CPP.
Far fewer fear living too long with an inadequate guaranteed income.
Yet for many middle-income retirees, longevity risk is actually the larger financial danger.
CPP and OAS were designed around this reality. They are social insurance systems built not on individual prediction, but on population mathematics. They assume that while no individual knows their lifespan, large populations behave predictably over time.
The programs are, in effect, institutionalized actuarial humility.
The exception to the rule: When receiving GIS
But there is an important exception to the “delay CPP” argument that policy experts sometimes understate.
For many low-income Canadians, taking CPP early is not irrational at all. In fact, it may be financially optimal.
Why?
Because the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) claws back income heavily after age 65. A low-income person who delays CPP may simply face larger GIS reductions later, losing much of the benefit of the increased CPP payment. By contrast, taking CPP earlier—before GIS eligibility begins—can sometimes produce greater lifetime income stability.
This is one of the paradoxes of Canada’s retirement system:
- middle-income Canadians are often rewarded for delay
- while low-income Canadians may rationally choose earlier uptake because of benefit interactions
In other words, the “best” CPP strategy depends not only on lifespan expectations, but on the architecture of income security itself.
The tension in retirement planning
And yet even here, mortality anxiety still shapes behaviour.
The cheque today feels safer than the promise tomorrow.
Modern retirement increasingly occurs in a world where people live longer but fear near term instability more.
Near term housing costs, care costs, inflation, economic uncertainty, and family obligations all encourage immediate certainty over future optimization.
The result is a profound tension between psychological comfort and statistical rationality. Retirement planning is therefore not merely financial planning. It is mortality planning under conditions of uncertainty.
And perhaps the most rational thing we can do is acknowledge that while none of us truly knows our individual lifespan but populations reveal powerful truths collectively.
Public pensions were built on that understanding. Increasingly, perhaps our personal planning should be too.
People are shot to death every day and our media are guaranteed to reliably inform us of that even though most of us have never been shot and have never witnessed an illegal shooting.
The reality is that you are likely not going to die today so it’s likely better to plan your life rather than plan for the day you leave the planet. And that’s because you don’t know when that day will be and you likely don’t want to know the answer.