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Suriviving_and_planning_for_retirement
| Suriviving and planning for retirement
The financial security umbrella that most wage earners would
like to shelter under after retirement is now leaking very badly
indeed! Money savvy experts block up news channels and
advertisement spaces with offers of transforming the average
citizen into a healthy, wealthy and wise investor; advocates of
'parting with your money' do house calls alongside those selling
vacuum cleaners and the sole 'wanted' letter fights for
attention in the mail box amongst the hundreds of once-in-a
lifetime offers of richness!
News these days is very negative regarding government pension
schemes! They blame it on either too many old people one day,
not enough young people the next! The answer we are told is "Go
Private"!
Private pension funds are collapsing left right and center!
Directors, Managers and Chairmen of companies tend as a rule to
do one or more of three things with employee's pension funds.
They decide that the amount is too great to give back and so
move to a remote island with no extradition treaty and eat
caviar and drink champagne without moral conscience creeping in.
Or they gamble the future of a failing company on money within
the pension fund and (as always happens) the company collapses
anyway! Or last but not least they listen to a door-to-door
salesman who suggests that the proceeds are invested in some
amazing opportunity that in actual fact turns out to be a big
scam! So pension schemes and for that matter provident funds
that are either controlled by the government or by the company
that you work for are basically not worth a dime; unless a sieve
be an attractive replacement for an umbrella!
There are other ways to go, other ways to invest money and to
build up a "portfolio" of stocks and shares in a variety of
companies that hopefully will provide high returns in the years
to come. Naturally, an extremely large sum of money is required
to invest initially which defeats most people but …….. start off
small and buy one share and should the company not go bust, not
file for bankruptcy, not use the pension fund to prop up
falsified accounts, not be accused of insider dealings and not
overstate earnings or be caught actually having no capital,
reserves or ability to continue trading then it is quite
possible that within a thousand years this one share might be
worth something! Too many companies have recently collapsed
taking with them thousands of shareholders dreams of not having
to skimp and do without during retirement!
Property has always been heralded as one of the best investments
available. And certainly many children saw their very own
parents exclaiming over the profit they have made on a recent
house sale (never mind the fact that they had to buy a new one
at the same time)! A nice thought, a dream of dreams but in
reality property prices have increased so dramatically that
nobody can afford anything larger than a shoebox under the town
bridge! Property has become an unaffordable luxury that now many
people still invest in thus saddling themselves with a life-time
mortgage that eats incomes dry, that prohibit investments
elsewhere due to lack of excess funds and that produces many
retired people with roofs over their heads but without the
finances to turn on the lights! Oh, and of course it is
impossible for property prices to keep on going up! Nobody ever
talks about possibility, but face the simple fact that people
cannot afford to buy houses anymore! That bubble will burst and
any savvy investor should take heed before falling into the
tangled property web!
Gold is of course an attractive option! Not only does it have
value but it also looks nice and impresses friends but ……..too
many problems are associated with this metal. When the time
comes to sell the price maybe way down; actual appreciation is
not a definite possibility and storage is a constant hassle.
Storage boxes in banks are not cheap and the money used for
rental would be best invested elsewhere. Under the bed is not
the safest or most secure of places, especially when friends are
'shown the hoard' after a drunken night on the town!
In reality there are only a limited number of ways for the
average wage earner to invest money for the future! One way is
to choose a couple of Investment Trusts - more than one just
incase one of these institutes happens to go bust! These are
companies that work with 'small' people's money by spreading
risk over a variety of businesses that trade on a stock exchange
of one nation or another! The other advantage of these companies
is that the government tends to be favorable towards them and so
tax incentives and reductions often apply!
One could of course invest heavily on horse racing or into a
casino in Las Vegas but gambling has never really provided long
term returns. Lottery tickets and scratch cards remain an ever
hopeful means to an end but, dream on!
Let's not live under false pretences. Be brutal and face the
fact that unless one has lots of money, the chance of getting
lots of money is well ……. best left unsaid! For example: 2000
pounds worth of bonds purchased from the Post Office (National
Savings - hahaha) yields 2475 pounds after five years of care.
Now in anybodies calculations even after twenty years in
servitude that amount is not going to keep the 'cat in the bag
or the 'pigeons in the coop' (whatever best describes the
situation)! The security of investments even in the most secure
of environments is not secure and the property bubble might
explode at any moment, oh and should you be winning the
government will ruin it all by charging stamp duty or VAT,
inheritance tax, capital gains tax or just tax to reduce the
final amount to what you first started with and plus a penny for
luck!
What is the answer?
One supermarket recently had on offer tins of baked bean; buy
twelve and get one free! Another chain decided to offload
hundreds of packets of pasta: spend a hundred and get a
delightful packet of pasta twists for free. And another had
loads of; two for the price of one items around the store! The
answer is to buy these products, as much as one can get hold of
and store them for the future. Dig holes underground, fill
cellars and attic's with non-perishable goods and so when
retirement days sneak up unexpectedly you may not have the money
to go out but at least you will not go hungry!
Well, not quite a suitable answer but then options are very
limited for those without a penny to spare! Selling oneself as a
matured sex slave to some North Korean General will probably not
appeal to many and suicide at the age of 67 (after having spent
the 1,347 pounds saved over the last forty years of hard work)
is more difficult to achieve than previously planned for.
In fact the only real answer is to move out of the country, to
buy a small property in the south of France, in Romania or Spain
where prices are half if not a quarter of those in the UK, where
the value of life is far better and where the air is clean. One
pound will go a lot further so ………….. Maybe this is the only
way!
About the author:
Ieuan Dolby is the Author and Webmaster of Seamania . As a Chief Engineer
in the Merchant Navy he has sailed the world for fifteen years.
Now living in Taiwan he writes about cultures across the globe
and life as he sees it.
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