Retirement planning is a multistep process that evolves over time. To have a comfortable, you need to build the financial cushion that will fund it all.
The results show that there has been a 5 percentage increase in the number of people who say they don’t have a retirement plan, from 41% last year to 46%. There is also a 5% decrease in the number of South Africans who feel good or pretty good about their retirement plan, from 38% to 33%. The proportion of South Africans who feel their plan is somewhat vague is the same as last year, at 21%. As might be expected, younger people are more likely to say retirement saving is not a priority – 80% of people under 35 in this group said retirement saving was not a priority at this stage.
Mistakes made by employees during working life:
-
- 65% start saving at 28 years; recommended age is 23
- On average 7% of income is invested; recommended age is 15%
- 62% don’t preserve retirement fund when we change jobs
- 90% don’t relook retirement savings after initial sign-up
- 38% never get professional advice about saving
Realities after retirement:
-
- 51% of South Africa’s pensioners can’t make ends meet.
- 1/3 of pensioners don’t have enough funds to cover medical expenses (their send biggest expense)
- 61% are unable to save for a rainy-day fund after retirement due to pressures of expenses
- 33% are in debt after they stop working
- 53% still have adult dependents to support, 32% would strongly advice youth of today to start early for retirement.