Between wage stagnation, the lacklustre job market and the rising cost of living, young Canadians are financially overwhelmed.
But there’s a major wealth transfer unfolding in Canada. According to Toronto-Dominion Bank, baby boomers are sitting on almost 50 per cent of wealth in Canada – roughly $9.3-trillion dollars.
The real question isn’t whether that money will exchange hands – it’s whether the wealth will be passed down in time to matter to the millennials and Gen Zs inheriting it.
A 2023 Ipsos survey of 1,500 Canadians highlights a striking gap between intentions and expectations for the transfer of this wealth. Baby boomers plan to leave an average inheritance of $940,000 to millennials – well above the $309,000 that millennials anticipate.
For a family that decides to give early, the effect on the adult children can be massive. Receiving a $300,000 inheritance in your 30s or 40s could allow a young family to move directly into their forever home, skipping tens of thousands in fees that come with buying and selling their way up the property ladder.
It could mean erasing over half of a typical mortgage, which in mid-2026 cost an average of $674,819, dramatically reducing financial stress and monthly fixed costs.
It could make part-time work or work-optional living possible in an economy where young people face high unemployment and a demoralizing wall of ghosted applications.
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That money could grow into a roughly $3-million retirement portfolio if invested and left untouched for 30 years at an 8-per-cent return. Or could wipe out student loans, freeing up cash to put toward savings and investing.
Such a gift could fund grandchildren’s extracurricular activities, child care costs and postsecondary expenses through an RESP, all of which can cost tens of thousands of dollars per year.
Boomer parents who choose to give their children part of their inheritance early can completely change their financial trajectory.
Despite that, some baby boomers are still reluctant to talk to their adult children about their estates. A survey from online estate planning platform Willful found that 41 per cent of more than 1,000 respondents haven’t had a detailed conversation with their family about end-of-life wishes.
Bill Perkins, principal at Skylar Capital and author of Die With Zero, which focuses on optimizing how you spend to achieve fulfillment, argues for giving money while you’re alive. He says that beyond just generosity, a financial gift has a different impact during one’s 30s than it does in their 60s or 70s.
Mr. Perkins calls them “memory dividends” – the joy of watching your child use your help – which you can’t collect once you’re gone. Helping your child buy a home while they are raising young kids does more than a lump sum that arrives once they are already retired.
Baby boomers are currently 62 to 80 years old, and the instinct is to assume your money has to last into your early 80s. But many Canadians are living into their mid-80s, or often into their early 90s. Adding in the rising cost of long-term care in Canada can mean tens of thousands of dollars a year.
So, older Canadians don’t need to “give it all away,” but they can pass down the actual surplus. A baby boomer sitting on seven figures of wealth while receiving a pension can fund two or more decades of retirement, hold back a reserve for care and still have enough left to change an adult child’s life.
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But both sides need to be a part of the conversation. Adult children worry about sounding greedy or morbid, while boomers worry that sharing this information will spoil their kids. It’s awkward, so no one brings it up and eventually time runs out.
Isn’t this the point of amassing wealth?
You probably won’t run out of money, but you risk dying with almost all of it if you draw down your wealth too slowly. The real cost of that isn’t financial, it’s the decades you underspent to protect a number you were never going to touch.
The generation holding this wealth built it on advantages that younger generations no longer have: defined benefit pensions, decades of wage and asset growth, affordable housing, cheap postsecondary, and social safety nets designed to help wealth grow. While boomers worked hard, those things are no longer accessible for young people.
If the money is genuinely a surplus to a fully funded retirement, and it’s still sitting there while your kids drown, the kindest and most rational thing to do with it is to let some of it move. Not at the reading of a will – now, while you’re here to watch it work.
Janine Rogan, CPA, is a bestselling author and founder of The Wealth Building Academy.