I REFER to your front-page report, “Do you have enough to retire?” (NST, Nov 18).
The statistics furnished by Employees Provident Fund (EPF) chief executive officer Datuk Shahril Ridza Ridzuan are frightening.
He said that only 23 per cent of EPF members aged 55 had minimum savings of RM196,000 in their account to sustain themselves until the age of 75.
As a human resources consultant, I worked with a multinational firm in an outplacement programme where the company was giving out its mutual separation scheme due to poor business and loss of market share of its product.
Our course of counselling and giving lessons in financial planning covered what they could do with their lump sum payout.
Despite the fact that Malaysians are earning more, their capacity to save has not improved, and many are still not prepared for retirement.
The other aspect is that many are still unaware of financial planning, and even if they are, many rely on the savings that they have in their fixed deposit accounts or returns from their unit trust investment.
But sometimes, these are not enough to sustain them through their retirement, for the cost of living has gone up by leaps and bounds.
I discovered that at least 60 per cent of them have huge debts on their credit card, car loan, housing loan, health bills and children’s education bills.
Worse, some resort to loan sharks or even gambling, and they are trapped in this vicious cycle.
It is good that EPF has introduced the retirement advisory service at eight branch offices on how to do retirement planning to ensure contributors have enough in their golden years with a basic amount of RM820 at least.
There are also private wealth advisers, and Private Retirement Schemes (PRS), a voluntary long-term investment scheme designed to assist individuals to accumulate savings for retirement, recommended by the Securities Commission.
n C. Sathasivam Sitheravellu, Seremban, Negri Sembilan
Link to source: http://www.nst.com.my/news/2015/11/112389/high-earnings-do-not-translate-more-savings
No comments:
Post a Comment