Taking Charge of Your Retirement is Good for You

When it comes to future life events, we would be better off if we take charge of how it will unfold rather than be surprised by what the future will offer. While we cannot control future events, we can certainly chart out our future and take the necessary steps to take us there.  One of our future events which will happen at some point in time is our retirement. For most of us, we will be retiring at age 60, whilst some of us may plan to retire earlier.  Taking charge of our retirement now will make the difference between looking forward to the retirement we want rather than walking into it unprepared and not knowing what retirement life has in store for us.

Our future is determined by the choices we make today. Taking charge of own retirement simply means taking responsibility to create the future that we want. How our retirement future will unfold will be determined by the choices we make today.  When you are retired, it will be too late to change our financial situation, hence taking charge of our retirement whilst we are earning our income will make the difference in how our retirement life will play out when it comes. Nobody wants to be a dependant but rather we would like to be independent for our retirement years, giving us control over how we want to live and spend.

We are all moving towards our retirement with each passing day.  Our preoccupation with our present living and busyness often causes us to push our future priorities aside.  As “time waits for no man”, we will have to proactively take charge of our retirement future and plan for the future we want. This involves spending time to visualise what do we want for our future in terms of the life we want to live, the things we want to do, the time we want to spend with the people that matters most to us and to leave behind a legacy.

For some of us, our retirement life will be a continuation of our living standards and lifestyle.  Retirement can also offer us the opportunity to fulfil our dreams and bucket lists of things we have always wanted to do but didn’t have the time.   Taking charge of your retirement allows you to plan out your retirement life, the way you want it to be.

Once we have visualised what we want for our retirement, we will have to address the question of how much our retirement life will cost and how we are going to finance it.  For most of us, the EPF will be the primary source of retirement savings.  The big question is whether our EPF savings will be sufficient to fund our desired retirement living standards and lifestyle.  Research has shown that you will need to save more for your retirement to ensure that you will have adequate, sufficient and sustainable income for your retirement.   So take charge of your retirement by saving more with a minimum 10% contribution of your current monthly income into the Private Retirement Scheme (PRS).

When we take charge over our retirement future, we are essentially taking responsibility and control of our retirement future, which also makes it easier to commit towards a plan to make it happen.  As saving for retirement is a long term endeavour over our working life, taking charge of retirement gives us a compelling reason to stay committed towards regularly saving until we retire, to achieve our desired retirement savings. You can have whatever you want in your retirement by taking action to save more for it. Be in control of your retirement by taking charge today.

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