Meet our members

Having a defined benefit (DB) pension plan enables Bethany Moir to get more enjoyment out of life now, because she’s less worried about saving for retirement. Last year, Bethany and her husband bought a cottage to enjoy with their two children, ages 7 and 10, now rather than waiting until they retire. Without their DB pension plans, Bethany says purchasing a cottage would have been much more difficult.

“We’re not watching the stock market every day, stressed out about whether we just lost half of our savings in our retirement income,” she says. “We continue to save but we’re able to make some investments that are a bit riskier and more related to our interests — and put some of those savings towards other things.”

Bethany is the director of stakeholder relations and strategic projects at Toronto Global, an investment attraction agency for the Toronto region. In her role, she looks at regionalism and best practices around the world to help continue to make the Toronto region a competitive global location for international businesses to establish and contribute to growing the regional economy. Prior to working at Toronto Global, Bethany worked for a municipality where she also had an OMERS pension, so having a pension is a big factor when it comes to her career growth. “Most of us are always open to new and interesting opportunities, but not many opportunities offer a pension like OMERS,” she says.

At age 40, retirement is in the somewhat distant future, but Bethany says she’s looking forward to travelling, knowing her family will have enough money to live comfortably.

“We’ll be able to do the things we’ve always loved doing, and travel is one of those things,” she says. “We moved to China with our two kids, we’ve lived in Australia, we’ve lived in the U.K., so we have a lot of international experience. And that’s something we look forward to in our retirement — having the financial freedom to continue doing those kinds of things.”