I continually stress to my staff and to family that they need to provide adequately for retirement. Something that is so logical and so obvious seems to escape 90% of the employed population.  They prefer to live for today, they prefer to say they cannot afford to save, because they don’t have any spare money – which is true. The reason that they don’t have any spare money is of course that they choose to allocate what they earn to different things – whether it is money spent on a cell phone, cigarettes, parties, fancy clothes or a car that is probably out of their budget.  

It is no wonder that there is discussion of a compulsory retirement savings product, because the government actually does need to do that.  On the one hand people claim that they don’t want rules and regulations and to be looked after, but the second they turn 65, they expect the government to take care of them whereas they would be in a far better position to do so if, from their very first working day, they have set aside 10% of their salary into a retirement annuity.  That is where the problem is – people have decided that the essentials in life are cigarettes and cell phones, not to mention parties and cars and have not decided that the very first thing that should come off their salary is that 10% should go towards a retirement annuity.  Once that 10% has gone off, then they can worry about budgeting everything else, and perhaps they could get a car that costs 10% to 20% less than the car they have.  The bottom line is if you don’t plan for your retirement, nobody else is going to and you are unlikely to win the Lottery – so you will spend the last 10 to 20 years of your life living in absolute poverty and if you are honest and open enough with yourself, you will at least admit that you put yourself there.  If you are not, you will try and blame society, the government or somebody else or you will be scrambling around like many pensioners trying to find some miracle financial product, and there is always one being advertised in the media that will give you a return of 30% - 40% a year on your money.  That normally ends with the last savings, possibly hurriedly squeezed together during the last five years of your working life, being lost to what always turns out to be scheme or a con.