Seventy-five per cent of Canadians have less than three months worth of savings in the bank, according to new poll conducted for Bank of Nova Scotia.

The Consumer Savings Poll, released today, also shows that while 69% of Canadians feel much better when they are saving for a “rainy day”, 42% admit to having no “rainy day” money.

“The good news is Canadians are saving more than Americans. The bad news is that it’s still not enough,” says financial expert and international best selling author David Bach, a special advisor to Scotiabank.

Although 73% of respondents feel that saving $5 more a day would make little (52%) or no (21%) difference to their financial well being, Bach says that saving $5 a day can mean the difference to paying off your debt, owning your own home and retiring earlier.

Five dollars a day invested conservatively in a registered plan with a 7.5% rate of return would yield more than $23,000 after 10 years, savings triple to more than $72,000 given a 20-year investment.

Currently, only one in five Canadians (19%) pay themselves first, and fully 47% say that none of their household’s after-tax income is automatically transferred into a savings plan or account.

Among the study’s other findings, only 44% of Canadians feel they are in control of their financial affairs.

Just over two-thirds of the respondents (69%), said they would most likely make small changes to their spending habits in order to save money.

The Ipsos-Reid poll conducted on behalf of the Bank of Nova Scotia between September 23 and September 27.

The poll is based on a randomly selected sample of 2,525 adult Canadians from the Ipsos-Reid Online Panel. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within (+/-) 2.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult Canadian population been polled.