The answer is a pretty certain, NO. Not even a single person whom you ask today would say yes but if you do not have much expenses and house is fully paid for plus you do not fall sick all the time, RM800 can still allow you to live a very frugal life in a smaller secondary town. By then, you are mostly paying for your food anyway. However, according to Employee Provident Fund, 80% of all 55 year olds today have less than that in their account to even live with RM800 in their account for the next 20 years.
Wait a minute, I think some of these people would still have a bit of savings, some other assets possibly too. Thus, it would be above the RM800 stated. Of course, at 55, majority are still fit to work. In Singapore, the usual retirement is at 65 years of age, another 10 strong years to go when compared to 55. I have seen many of our seniors working in McDonalds here in Malaysia. In Singapore which I go to at least twice every year, I could see the seniors in food courts and some in supermarkets, working as cashiers. Personally, I hope to still be active in some kind of work till I really feel too tired or when I am way too old to work. Hopefully by then, I would have enough money to last my wife and I till the day we leave the world. Yes, it would most probably be in Ipoh, my favourite city.
Currently, over 75 percent of the 14 million EPF contributors are earning less than RM2,000 per month. Another 15 percent earns between RM2,000 and RM5,000 a month and the top 10% earns more than RM5,000. Please do our best to aim to be within the top 10%. Actually, it’s not that tough. Get a degree, work hard, slowly climb the career ladder and by the time you are a manager, your salary would be easily higher than RM5,000. Many professionals achieve this even before they reach thirty. It is very important to also invest and save whatever you have during your working years. Doing these (invest and save) later would mean that you may need to take much higher risks and it is not something advisable when you are older and harder to restart all over. PROPERTY is one very important asset class to have. Most of the time, it appreciates enough so that by the time you have fully repaid and wants to sell, the money you get would really be higher than your typical EPF savings.
written on 16 Mar 2015
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