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This column is brought to you by someone who should be retired. At least that is what some surveys are telling me about my decision to be working today.

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I say that tongue-in-cheek because a recent poll published by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce found that, on average generation Z plans to retire at 59, with millennials and gen X targeting the ripe old age of 61. I just scrape into the baby boomer category, and mercifully, that demographic either is retired or plans to retire at 63, my current age.

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Just two years to figure this all out — or I could follow the lead of a guy who was part of one of the most successful advertising campaigns in Canadian history.

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Alf Goodall, a long-time insurance executive who once worked on London Life’s Freedom 55 campaign, shares two things in common with me: We’re the same age and still working.

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For the gen Z group, who may know nothing about this famous campaign, Freedom 55 was an advertising blitz that teased people about calling it quits a decade before they could even get their senior’s discount.

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Goodall remembers people walking through the front doors of the insurance company in London, Ont., and asking where they could sign up to retire on the spot. It was never that easy.

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“Back then, people did want to retire, but largely because they hated work,” said Goodall. “They wanted to get away from that. They wanted to travel. They wanted to do what they wanted.”

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The former London Life vice-president said working is more fluid today, especially in retirement.

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And he should know. After London Life was bought, he went on to work for Great-West Lifeco Inc. and later Sun Life Financial, but when he was retired at 57, he knew that wasn’t it. Just months after his exit, he began a whole new career when he bought a landscaping company, which he still owns — something that gives him flexibility over his life.

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“That version of retirement is horrible, and first of all, it just takes way too much money,” he said, about retiring at 55.

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That doesn’t mean people should ignore retirement planning. The CIBC poll, conducted by Ipsos between Jan. 5 and Jan. 14 based on a sample of 1,500 Canadians aged 18 and over, found that we start saving for retirement at age 30 on average. The poll is accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

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Without question, the magic of compounding and the benefits of tax-sheltered accounts will make those retirement goals more attainable if you start saving as early as possible.

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But the overwhelming reality is that Canadians are living longer and are going to have to work longer, too.

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Parisa Mahboubi, associate director of research with the CD Howe Institute, argued in a paper last year that Canada needed to gradually raise the normal retirement age from 65 to 67.

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She said the reality is that average retirement ages are on the rise, driven in part by the fact that people get a much smaller allowance from the Canada Pension Plan at 60 than at 70 and increasingly choose the latter.