When to plan for retirement?

How many of today’s young generation or we may say generation of less than 35 years old will think or plan for retirement? I think the population is very less. But do you know the effect of such postponing? By postponing your retirement you are actually creating financial trouble for yourself.

These days one Youtube video creating huge cry about the importance of one’s retirement planning. Please click on below image to view video fully.

It is disheartening to see such a situation of this old man. But it depicts the hard realities of one’s post work life. How many of us are ready to work so hard as this old gentleman working now? It is hard to think to travel so far and work for whole day just to run the show of life.

Recently I got a comment on blog post that one lady actually planning to retire at 42 years of age and she is currently around 35+. When I asked about the reason behind choosing retirement at so early, then the answer was “Enjoy Life”. What is enjoyment to leave on retirement fund from 42 years to till 75+ or if current trend of life expectancy goes on increasing then this may be 80+. How well are such people prepared about their livelihood, health complications and about ENJOY?

Recently a foreign financial firm conducted a survey. They provided four topics for planning and asked people to say what they spend most time thinking about. Answers are on expected line. People spend more time on vacation planning than any other financial goals of their life. This indicates the negligence toward retirement planning.

So when and how to plan for retirement and start investing?

• Now-Yes plan it and start investing now itself. Whether you are 25 years of young who started your first job or 35 years who have wife,kids or loan EMI. Starting now is the mantra. Prolonging will complicate.
• Investment Amount-You look at any calculator, you will find so many assumptions to arrive at monthly investment requirement. Because retirement planning is of long term. But there may be so many unplanned things like considered inflation may be lesser than actual. Your expenses may grow at retirement due to health complications or other expenses. Hence investing as much as possible for this goal is mantra to be at safer side.
• Equity or Debt-This goal being long term no point in selecting any debt product or any typical retirement insurance plan. Instead choose a best equity fund and start investing.
• Plan-As of now there is no such product which we may say good or best for retirement planning. Hence creating your own retirement corpus by investing in equity mutual funds over longer period is best and cost effective than any other products.
• Review-Finally investing in equity involves continues monitoring. Hence review it on regular base.

You can try Retirement Calculators at Freefincal.com, run by Mr.Pattu (King of Calculator) and working as Physicist at IIT, Madras.