There’s a disconnect between the desire of younger Canadians to own their own home, and the action they are taking to help achieve it.
A survey from RBC called Financial Independence in Retirement asked people of all ages about their financial priorities.
On homeownership, 48% of millennials (aged 25-34) said that buying their own home was their top financial priority, but just 28% said they had saved towards that goal during 2017.
For Gen Xers (35-54), there were more who had saved towards homeownership (26%) than said it was their top priority (23%) probably because a larger share were already homeowners.
Among the 55+ age group, 18% wanted to buy a home but only half that percentage had saved towards it in 2017.
Home renovation saw a better correlation between intention and action with roughly a quarter of all respondents both intending and saving towards that goal.
Millennials surpassed one of their financial priorities for last year – saving to reduce/eliminate debt. While under half (47%) identified reducing debt as a priority, over half (51%) actually put money toward that priority.
