Have you ever thought of how much is needed for your retirement? According to the survey by AXA Retirement Scope 2010, most of the Malaysian seems like very aware of the amount of money that they will get after retirement. Actually, this is a good sign as you still know exactly how much you will earn or get after your retirement.
However, there’re many Malaysian do not start their retirement preparation early. Based on my analysis, there’s only 5% of total number of Malaysian are prepared for retirement. And, there are almost 80% of the working adults which in the age range of 25-34 years old think that they are too young to think about retirement, or some of them tend to believe they have enough as they have their EPF savings.
In general, workers like to retire at age 55 years old and they expect to retire at that age, yet those with bigger family responsibilities increasingly want to retire later in life (60 years). In the other words, they cannot retire with financial security.
For those people who living and having children but they are not saving enough, then probably they may face challenge in their retirement. For those who know to save occasionally, regularly but not for retirement they may fail also if they do not take into consideration about inflation rates and rising medical costs.
Inflation is the biggest threat to us which is beyond our human control and it can slowly eat up our saving. The rate of return in EPF of 5-6% is not enough to counter the inflation rate.
Anyway, try not to care about how much you can save as what you save may just disappear one day when something unexpected happens. But, you need to be always make sure that your retirement fund will last lifetime.
When I start my business as Financial Planner with my Accountant background, the first thing in my list is Retirement Planning, because the market is so huge…… (most people need it) the problem should be breakdown to two:
1) Most people save too little for retirement 2) Rate of return is not sufficient (may be negative due to losses).
To create awareness and education will be part of my job.
yea..I feel that there still a lot of Malaysian do not plan for their retirement and the financial advisor always play an important role for them. I can see that it can bring brighter future for those who become financial consultant.
Frankly speaking, it’s not easy to save more for retirement planning because of inflation. Most of the monthly income goes to food, house loan, car loan and not much left for the saving.