Can We Retire?

source: www.thestar.com.my

With people living longer, marrying and having children later and not saving enough, facing retirement is a challenge. While there is growing awareness about the need to plan, less than 5% are prepared for retirement and fail to take into consideration inflation rates and rising medical costs.

The country is very concern on the retirement issues that i read it almost once a week. As every individual works their sock off to improve the standard of living and provide better lifestyle for their family members, almost forget on the retirement matter.

Many people on the street said "i'm still young, no worry", "i'll keep on working if my health persist", "i had EPF", and so many others answer that i received everyday single day in my job. Compare to other western countries especially in Europe and US, people start preparing their retirement at the earliest age possible one reason is the government keep on educating them on impact of not having enough retirement fund. In Ipoh people over here still very conservative in terms of thinking, most of them only trust bank because of the status. They will park all their money in there while do not care about the inflation. Some knows about it but don't seem bother them, while some really couldn't understand about inflation.

Apart from EPF, there are so many retirement tools that people can look in it. Don't put all your eggs in the same basket. Bank saving alone will never enough if we still maintain our lifestyle after retirement unless we able to save millions of dollar. On average as published on newspapaer "The Star", most EPF money gone in 3-5 years partly goes to children education and acquiring assets such as house, car or even renovate their house.

Then, medical expenses is the "giant killer" in my opinion. We will get sick one day, the question is "when". If we do not prepare for it, we might face the consequences later in our life. From what i perceive, insurance plays a big role in terms of medical insurance, most family already had medical insurance.

So, start save for your retirement today, it doesn't matter if our salary is only few hundred dollars a month, it is not how much we earn is counted, it is how much we able to save every month. Prevention is better than cure. Don't let it ruin our life. We work very hard every single day, don't let retirement fund dampen our life where we suppose to relax and enjoy the nature wonders of the world, at least that was my opinion.