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