You Know You Only Live Once

INTRODUCTION

In my previous post on whether you are prepared for retirement, I mentioned a bit on the schemes readily available in the country I am currently residing, that is Singapore.

I will not go into details of the various schemes, rather, I will summarize the various schemes available, and if any readers who wish to learn in more details, they can go to the website in the link I have provided in this article, and try to find out more about the scheme and how it operates.

The main objective of writing this is

• to provide some ideas and
• information of the availability of the schemes for retirement,
• create some awareness on how and where people can look for and
• take some action if they are looking for some retirement scheme
• to help them to live a sustainable retirement life.

Currently, I noticed quite a lot of people are not aware of what are the schemes the Singapore government have in place, to help its citizens and residents to ease their retirement worry, and to a certain extent , to have a reasonable and affordable retirement living.

SCHEMES AVAILABLE

The various schemes available in Singapore where retirees can consider and plan their retirement are as below:

1. Central Provident Fund

     2.  Supplementary Retirement Scheme.

     3.  Insurance Retirement Plan

I will briefly elaborate on the various schemes.

1. The Central Provident Fund (CPF)

This is the fund set up by the Singapore Government, primarily to cater for the retirement of the workers.

As explained in CPF website, the main objective of the Fund is :

What is CPF?

Central Provident Fund (CPF) is a comprehensive social security system that
enables working Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents to set aside funds
for retirement.

It also addresses healthcare, home ownership, family protection
and asset enhancement.

In its website, they also provided information about their Retirement Plan, you can access it via this CPF

For Retirement,

The CPF Board has outlined in its website the following:

CPF LIFE

CPF has created a program to provide CPF members with a monthly pay-out for life, when they reach their pay-out eligibility age.

Retirement Sum Scheme (RSS)

This is another program devised by CPF to provide CPF members with a monthly pay-out, when they reach their payout eligibility age.

Retirement Sum Topping-Up Scheme

The Retirement Sum Topping-Up Scheme is to help CPF Members to build up their retirement savings, by topping up their own or their loved ones' CPF Accounts.

Withdrawals of CPF savings from 55

CPF allows its members to withdraw their CPF savings upon reaching retirement age of 55, after

• setting aside the Full Retirement Sum or
• Basic Retirement Sum with sufficient CPF property charge/pledge in their Retirement Account.

However, please note that CPF members do not choose between CPF LIFE and Retirement Sum Scheme.

CPF members will automatically be included in CPF LIFE to enjoy lifelong payouts:

• if they are a Singapore Citizen or Permanent Resident
• born in 1958 or after; and
• have at least SGD $ 60,000 in their Retirement Account
• six months before they reach their payout eligibility age (PEA),
• while Retirement Sum Scheme (RSS) is for CPF members who do not need to be on CPF LIFE.

2. Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS)

This is one of the schemes by the Singapore government to address the financial needs of its greying population, by helping the fellow Singaporeans to save more for their golden years.

The scheme was started in 2001 and is operated by private sector.

This scheme is not to replace the Central Provident Fund (CPF), rather it complimented the CPF.

CPF savings are meant

• to provide for housing and medical requirements, and
• for basic daily needs of the contributors after their retirement.

The main different between CPF and SRS is that

• CPF is mandatory for working people
• Participation in SRS is voluntary.

The people can contribute to SRS in varying amount (subject to a cap) at their own discretion,.

The contribution may be used to purchase various investment instruments.

For more detail about this scheme, you may want to visit this link in Singapore’s Ministry of Finance

In that, the MOF actually outlined the benefits and how Singaporeans can contribute to the Scheme.

3. Insurance Retirement Plan

The major insurance companies in Singapore also provide insurance retirement plan of their own.

They usually have their

• Retirement Saving Plan,
• Endowment Plan,
• Protection Plan,
• Income Guaranteed Plan,

However, this will be discussed in more details in another article in the future.

Besides the retirement schemes available, CPF Singapore also has various schemes to take care of the ever-increasing medical and health care cost, this again can be viewed in detail in the CPF website.

With the various schemes available, the retirees in Singapore actually are able to enjoy quite a good and comfortable retirement life style.

They can plan their retirement properly, bearing in mind of their savings in CPF and the schemes available.

At the same time, I would suggest anyone who are able to enjoy these Schemes to study this thoroughly.

They can engage a professional to advise them properly, however they should be wary of the advice on taking out the whole CPF savings, and do the investment themselves.

If anyone suggests you take all your CPF Savings and do the investment yourself, you need to consider the following:

• Are you really good at investing and
• Can you beat the returns CPF Board is giving to its members.
• Whether that professional has a good track records in investment.

Therefore, It will be more advisable for the members to hold discussion with CPF Board officials, to understand in more details of various schemes and how it helps the CPF Members.

Please also be reminded that “The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this
article belong solely to the author, and do not represent nor necessarily
reflect the official policy or position of the CPF Board.”

Conclusion

If any one wants to learn more, you can look at the links I have provided in this article.

Alternatively, in the comment and feedback section below, you may put in your comments and feedback.

On the other hand, If you have any questions or suggestion.

Please feel free to leave your comments and suggestion below.

I will be more than happy to answer and help out whatever way I can.

Every one has to reach this stage of the life -- RETIREMENT.

How do we prepare for retirement means a lot and will definitely play a very important part in deciding, whether we have a healthy and happy retirement.

If you want to have a good and healthy retirement, you have to ensure you prepare well for it.

What Do We Have In Term Of Retirement?

1. You may have a good and healthy retirement,
2. Have one good but not so healthy retirement,
3. A healthy but not so good retirement.

A happy and healthy retirement is one :

• You can do whatever you want to do
• Have the freedom to do it,
• It is not just about sitting down enjoying your food or game that you like
• And no worry about work and money.

If we are not well-prepared for a healthy life, then we may not have a happy and healthy retirement, as we may be bogged down by sickness or restriction in movement, due to old age or injury.

Assuming we want to retire from working life, and looking forward to have a happy retirement lifestyle, which we have been looking forward to, and to experience a new phase of our life.

How Do We Go About It?

How to have a happy and healthy retirement?

Here are some steps which may help you to achieve what you are looking for in retirement.

1. Draw a detail plan of what you want to do in retirement.

After the daily grind of working life and planning for the family, it is time to plan for retirement, and enjoy the rest of our life.

Hence, it is important that we plan our retirement, and have a detail planning mapped out and stick to the plan during our retirement.

2. Taking care of our health is our priority during retirement.

Without a healthy body, it will be quite difficult to enjoy a good and happy retirement life, and enjoy the lifestyle we are going to appreciate for the rest of our life.

Our body will tend to stop working, the muscle will not work as we wanted if we do not do basic exercise daily, at least we need to ensure we are walking for certain numbers of minutes every day, just to keep our muscles working instead of deteriorating and sooner will lose its motor senses.

I enjoy brisk walking,  it helps to keep me healthy and make my body metabolism working.

I am not a doctor, so I will just share here as a layman, what I do to keep myself healthy.

Brisk walking for at least 30 minutes a day, swinging your arms as you walk, this is to ensure you do the bare minimum of exercise to keep your muscles in good shape

As I learned and share the Words of Wisdom below.

3. Having a stable income for retirement.

By now, we should have worked out on how much is required for our retirement, and what is the bare minimum.

If you still have not set up a continuous stream of income for retirement, it is better to start now and work on it.

As I mentioned in my earlier article, one of the method is to sign up with Wealthy Affiliate ,and start blogging and sharing your life experience, at the same time generate some passive income for your retirement needs.

Engaging in blogging every day in WA, this will also help you to keep your mind and mental working, and keeping your mind from regressing and becoming senile.

Hence, this may work out to be a very good retirement plan,

• blogging and
• Putting it in writing your sweet memory in your website,
• Generating good traffic and income,
• At the same time can help to keep the mind fresh and active during old age.

4. Search a good place for retirement and do it with your partner.

Yes, if we can retire to a place with the scenery as shown in the picture above, that will be like living in paradise, with fresh air and away from all the pollution and hassle.

Retirement does not mean you have to stay in your current place, you may want to downsize, and move to a more secluded place, away from the traffic and over populated area, and make sure you can have a place to do your daily walk and exercise.

By staying in a smaller house may help you to free up some free money, and help you financially in the golden years ahead.

Well, you have to do all these with your partner, and decide on any retirement decision together, as you want your partner to stay with you together in the golden age years.

It will be better that decisions are made together, if not, you may not have a happy and peaceful time, since you may be seemed to force it on your partner to accept your choice, which may not be to her/his liking.

5. Be realistic about what retirement mean to your lifestyle.

A lot of people enjoy the first few months of their retirement, and then reality sinks in, they find that they need to change their routine now that they are in retirement.

Fighting boredom is one of the main task a retiree needs to tackle, hence, if we are planning and looking forward to retirement, it is important to have continuous planning in place.

Perhaps, you may want to catch up with reading all those books which you wanted to read, but did not really have the time to do so, now that you are retired, it is time to catch up with, and what better way than to go to Amazon. And find out what are the books you can read now that you are retired.

These are the first 5 steps to achieve happy and healthy retirement in our golden years, if you like the article and gain some insight of it, do share this article with your friends.

And do drop your comments below if you have good ideas on what makes a happy and healthy retirement.

Are you prepared for retirement?

As we grow older and reaching retirement age, we tend to ask ourselves this question.

What Options Do We Have To Prepare For Retirement?

When we are reaching retirement age, normally we will be asking ourselves a question.

What are we going to do upon retirement?

However, usually a common answer is:

We will take a holiday and visit some places, all the while using all of our savings on the holiday trip

You know you only live once.

If we do not plan for our retirement, when the time come for retirement, we will have some real issue we need to address.

Reality of Retirement

After holidaying and spending almost all the savings, the reality sinks in after reaching home.

Staring at the walls in the house, suddenly we realize there is a financial crisis building up.

After the holiday, and waking up the next day and realize that:

• today we need not keep working.
• When the bills are in the mail,
• the reality sinks in.
• There is no income since we have already retired, and
• spent most of the savings on the holidays and
• still have so many years to live.

What Have We Done To Prepare For Retirement?

In order to have a peaceful and stress free retirement, where we can enjoy a quality life style, we must prepare ourselves early, preferably from young and have the energy and means to do it.

We have to look at this issue in various ways:

• in terms of financial,
• social and
• final place for our retirement.

To prepare for a meaningful retirement with quality and healthy lifestyle, as you know, you only live once, hence it is important we are well-prepared for our retirement.

Majority of the people I have spoken to, sad to say, they do not seem to care about their future, they are also ill prepared for their retirement.

Can We Depend On Government For Retirement?

A lot of them depend on the government to help them out, relying on the welfare measures the government is implementing.

However, there is only so much a government is able to provide to take care of its senior citizen.

Prepare For Retirement, How About Depending On Own Children?

For those who depend on the children to look after them and provide them with retirement life style, especially the Asian Countries.

With the current competitive world, the children themselves have already had their hands full to survive, let alone taking care of their parents.

Financial Planning For  You To Prepare For Retirement

Before we officially retire and start to enjoy our life, we must plan for a proper financial retirement plan, so that we have enough to enjoy our retirement life.

How Does Singapore Do It?

In country where I am currently residing, when we are working, we are supposed to contribute the Provident Fund which is a mandatory retirement fund set up by the government.

The policy set out in the Fund is good.

If a member of the Fund really follows the plan lay out, we may be able to have a reasonable retirement life style.

Other Methods

Perhaps we may want to look at some suggestions, and guide or retirement plans.

There are some readily available in books written by some well-known authors, perhaps we can learn some of them and prepare ourselves for a good and quality retirement

Other than depending on government, or studying from some books on what need to be done for retirement.

In this age of internet and high technology, we may want to learn some basic skill, and making use of the key board to have some passive income to sustain our retirement life.

One of the easiest and fastest way to earn some basic passive income is

• to have some incomes by doing internet business and
• do some online trading on financial instrument.

Unless and until we can take care of the financial, then only we are able to talk about a sustainable and worried free retirement.

Perhaps, by doing some affiliate marketing and generate some passive income will be one of the ways, and Wealthy Affiliate will be a good place to start.

Social, Healthy Living And Final Place Of Living For Our Retirement

One of the main issue we need to consider when we want to retire is -

Where are we going to live during our retirement?

This is a very important decision to consider,  it affects the amount we have set aside for our retirement, and the standard of living we are longing for in our retirement.

Normally, people will consider the following when they look for a place

• quiet and,
• with good scenery and
• stress free to enjoy their retirement life, and
• not in the city which is very stressful , for example, a city with heavy traffic jam and the hectic pace of life.

Other issues to be considered are:

• The would be retiree may also want to look into the medical facility of the place for retirement,
• since as we get older, the tendency to be sick is quite high,
• especially for those who have been living a high life, who may have already had some modern day sickness.

Unless the place where we decide to reside for our retirement:

• is really good, and
• can give us the quality of life we are looking for, and
• which will help us in improving our health
• since we are stress free, the body will be able to rejuvenate,
• with quality lifestyle, we will be able to live better.
• The other issue we have to consider in deciding the place to live out our retirement is the health care facility of the place.

Some places may look very nice and peaceful to be a very suitable place for retirement.

However if the health care facility is not readily available, and since our old age tend to have more sickness.

In emergency, we may have some worry time to get the treatment in time

Conclusion

If we really want to have a worried free and healthy retirement living, we need to seriously plan and work on our retirement plan.

We need to start the planning the moment we are in the working life after finishing school.

In the current modern high technology world, there are some people who have retired young.

They are able to do so after making so much and start enjoy their life, however, how many of these people are among us?

Despite all these, we still can look forward to our retirement if we have planned it properly.

I will talk more about retirement in more details in the future postings.

If you have any comments and feedback, please feel free to leave your comments