Retirement Activities in Canada: What Retirees Do and What It Costs
Retirement activities in Canada look quieter, and cost more, than most people picture. Statistics Canada's 2022 Time Use Survey found that Canadians 65 and over average 4.0 hours a day of passive leisure, mostly television, and 1.0 hour of active leisure such as hobbies, crafts and time online. On the money side, households headed by someone 65 or over spent $3,812 on recreation in 2023, against $5,231 for the average Canadian household.
Retirement does not empty the calendar so much as re-fill it, and what fills it sets your spending for the next twenty years. Here is what Canadians actually do with the hours, and what each pattern costs.
How Canadians 65 and over actually spend the day
The 2022 Time Use Survey asks people to keep a 24-hour diary. Averaged across everyone 65 and over, the day looks like this, next to the average for all adults 15 and over.
| Activity | Age 65+ (hours/day) | All adults 15+ (hours/day) |
|---|---|---|
| Sleep and personal activities | 10.1 | 9.7 |
| Passive leisure (TV, reading, music) | 4.0 | 2.1 |
| Unpaid household work | 2.8 | 2.1 |
| Eating or drinking | 1.8 | 1.4 |
| Active leisure (hobbies, crafts, technology) | 1.0 | 0.8 |
| Socializing | 0.9 | 0.9 |
| Transport | 0.7 | 0.9 |
| Paid work | 0.6 | 3.5 |
| Shopping for goods or services | 0.6 | 0.4 |
| Active sports | 0.4 | 0.3 |
| Volunteering and unpaid help to others | 0.2 | 0.2 |
The biggest change is paid work: 3.5 hours a day across all adults, 0.6 hours at 65 and over. That is close to three hours released. Passive leisure absorbs about two of them, and television alone runs 3.0 hours a day at 65 and over against 1.7 for adults generally. This compares age groups rather than the same people over time, but the shape is hard to miss.
Two other lines matter. Socializing does not move at all, holding at 0.9 hours a day in both columns. Housework rises from 2.1 hours to 2.8, which is the quiet reason so many retirees report being busier than they expected.
Retirement activities and the budget: what $3,812 a year buys
Statistics Canada's Survey of Household Spending splits recreation into four buckets. These are 2023 averages per household, covering every household whose reference person is 65 or over, from very comfortable to very tight. Treat it as a shape, not a target.
| Recreation category | Households 65+ | All households |
|---|---|---|
| Recreational services (package trips, entertainment, facility fees) | $2,281 | $2,578 |
| Recreational vehicles and associated services | $699 | $909 |
| Recreational equipment and related services | $665 | $1,443 |
| Home entertainment equipment and services | $167 | $301 |
| Total recreation | $3,812 | $5,231 |
The split is the interesting part. Households 65 and over spend nearly as much as everyone else on recreational services, the things you book, attend or join, but less than half as much on recreational equipment: $665 against $1,443. Spending moves from buying gear to buying access.
Total spending does fall a long way after 65. Average total expenditure for a household headed by someone 65 or over was $78,499 in 2023, against $108,225 for the average household, and current consumption was $53,188 against $76,750. Recreation falls much less. At $3,812 it works out to about 7.2% of a 65-plus household's current consumption, slightly more than the 6.8% recreation represents for households overall. Recreation is not the category that gets cut when income drops. It is the one people protect.
Travel is the largest single line, and the least predictable
Inside that recreation budget, the biggest single item for households 65 and over is package trips, at $1,006 in 2023. The all-household average was $1,102. Package travel barely falls with age, on a budget that is nearly a third smaller.
Independent travel does fall. Households 65 and over spent $636 on airplane travel and $363 on hotels and motels, against $1,158 and $587 for households overall. Fewer self-planned trips, more organized ones.
The budgeting problem with travel is that it is lumpy. An average of $1,006 a year is often one larger trip every second or third year, not a steady monthly line. If your drawdown plan assumes smooth spending, a travel year reads as an overspend when it is the plan working.
Hobbies for retired men: what the numbers actually say
The stereotype is the retired man with nothing to do and nobody to call. The self-reported data does not support it. In the Canadian Social Survey for the fourth quarter of 2024, 7.1% of men 65 and over said they always or often feel lonely, against 11.0% of women the same age, and 62.9% of older men said they rarely or never feel lonely.
What the time diaries do show is a difference in where the free time goes. Among Canadians 65 and over:
- Men average 1.3 hours a day of active leisure; women average 0.8.
- Most of that gap is screen time. Men spend 0.8 hours a day using technology, women 0.4.
- Men average 0.5 hours a day on active sports, women 0.3.
- Arts and hobbies are even, at 0.5 hours a day each.
- Volunteering and unpaid help to other households runs 0.2 hours a day for men and 0.3 for women.
So retired men are not short of activity. They lean toward solitary and equipment-based hobbies and away from the community channel, and that has a budget signature: equipment and vehicle hobbies are front-loaded, then they keep billing. Spending by households 65 and over on recreational vehicles and associated services rose from $441 in 2019 to $699 in 2023, with the purchase portion climbing from $270 to $488. Of the 2023 figure, $211 was operating cost: insurance, registration, storage and repairs.
The practical rule before buying the boat, the trailer or the workshop is to price the carrying cost, not the purchase. Insurance, storage and licence renewals recur every year whether the thing gets used or not, and they routinely outlive the enthusiasm that bought it.
Volunteering fills the most hours and costs almost nothing
Retired Canadians carry a disproportionate share of the volunteering in this country. In 2023, Canadians aged 65 to 74 volunteered an average of 283 hours each, the highest of any age group and well above the 173-hour national average. They were 12.9% of the population aged 15 and over but supplied 19.8% of all volunteer hours.
Their participation rate is slightly below average: 67.9% for 65 to 74 and 55.1% for 75 and over, against 72.8% for all ages. Fewer of them volunteer, but the ones who do, do far more of it.
There is also more room than there used to be. The overall volunteer rate fell from 79% in 2018 to 73% in 2023 and total volunteer hours dropped 18%. Organizations are short of people.
Financially, volunteering is close to unique among retirement activities: a large block of hours at essentially no cost beyond getting there. Giving money is a separate line, and one where older households lead everyone. Households 65 and over gave an average of $1,098 to charity in 2023, against $713 for households overall.
More on this topic: How Much Do Canadians Need to Retire Comfortably · Retiring in Atlantic Canada: What It Actually Costs · Best Places to Retire in Canada
Hobbies for older adults when mobility or health changes
Forty per cent of Canadians 65 and over had a disability in 2022, up from 38% in 2017. Among seniors with a disability, the most common types are pain-related (68%), mobility (63%) and flexibility (59%). Activity planning that ignores this is planning for one decade of retirement, not three.
The financial risk is paying for access you can no longer use. Households 65 and over pay an average of $268 a year in dues and fees for sports and recreation facilities. A membership, a slip or a storage bay keeps billing after the activity quietly stops, so anything with an annual renewal deserves a yearly look.
The activities that hold up best are cheap per hour and easy to scale down:
- Gardening. This is the one discretionary line where 65-plus households outspend every younger group: $545 on garden supplies and services in 2023, against $452 for households overall and $479 for households headed by someone 40 to 54. Raised beds and containers keep it going after kneeling stops working.
- Reading. Households 65 and over spent $201 on reading materials in 2023, slightly above the $195 national average, including $30 on newspapers against $14 overall. A library card moves most of that to zero.
- Arts, crafts and writing. Canadians 65 and over already put 0.5 hours a day into this, more than the 0.3-hour adult average, and it scales down to a table and good light.
- Community and municipal programs. Almost all of the 0.9 hours a day older Canadians spend socializing costs nothing, and a local seniors centre is the cheapest way to keep that number from sliding.
One line worth watching in the other direction: households 65 and over spent $254 on games of chance in 2023, against $192 for households overall. Small in isolation, but it recurs, and it is one of the few discretionary lines that goes up rather than down with age.
Putting your own number on it
Averages are a starting point, not a budget. A useful exercise in the year before you retire, or the first year after:
- Write your own figure for each of the four recreation buckets, not one lump sum for "fun".
- Separate recurring costs from one-time ones. Recurring is what your income has to carry.
- Flag the lines that rise after 65 instead of falling: television and satellite service ($803 for 65-plus households against $561 overall), charitable giving, and games of chance.
- Treat travel as a multi-year envelope, not an annual line.
Then hold the total against your income plan. If how you spend your days is the part of retirement you care about most, it belongs in the plan as a named line, not the thing that gets squeezed when something else goes wrong.
The figures above are Statistics Canada averages across all Canadian households in the stated age group, spanning a wide range of incomes, health and housing. They describe what a large group did, not what any one household should spend. Your own numbers will look different.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do Canadian retirees spend on recreation each year?
Households headed by someone 65 or over spent an average of $3,812 on recreation in 2023, compared with $5,231 for all Canadian households, according to Statistics Canada's Survey of Household Spending. That is a household average across a very wide income range, so it is a reference point rather than a target. Because total spending falls faster than recreation does, recreation ends up taking a slightly larger share of a 65-plus budget than of the average household budget.
Do retired Canadians really have more free time?
Yes, but less than the drop in work hours suggests. Canadians 65 and over average 0.6 hours a day of paid work compared with 3.5 hours for all adults 15 and over. Unpaid household work rises at the same time, from 2.1 hours a day to 2.8, which absorbs part of the gain. The rest lands mostly in passive leisure, which roughly doubles to 4.0 hours a day.
Is travel the biggest expense in retirement?
Not overall. Shelter is still the largest category, averaging $15,703 for households 65 and over in 2023. Travel is the biggest line within recreation: package trips averaged $1,006, more than any other single recreation item. It is also the least predictable, because most households take a larger trip occasionally rather than spending an even amount every year.
What are genuinely low-cost hobbies for retirees in Canada?
Gardening, reading, arts and crafts, and volunteering all rank high on hours and low on cost. Gardening is the only discretionary category where 65-plus households outspend every younger age group, at $545 a year, and even that is modest next to equipment-based hobbies. Volunteering costs essentially nothing beyond transport, and Canadians aged 65 to 74 already average 283 hours a year of it.
Do older Canadians volunteer more or less than younger ones?
Fewer of them volunteer, but those who do give far more time. The volunteer rate was 67.9% for Canadians aged 65 to 74 in 2023 and 55.1% for those 75 and over, against 72.8% across all ages. Average annual hours run the other way: 283 for the 65-to-74 group, the highest of any age group, against a 173-hour national average.
