The financial side of retirement planning

Needless to say you will find so many choices to help you in the financial planning for retirement that I do not need to add anything here. However there simply does not seem to be enough emphasis on starting that planning now - when we have just got our first job. The chorus of howls as to why bother; I have all those years to go etc I can hear in the forground BUT in the background is that little voice that says otherwise. I know that there was no thought about this in my education. God bless them but I had no indication from my parents on this. I kind of wandered into my first jobs and into my thirty somethings before I even discussed it with my beloved. Determined that this should not happen to my children I included this in my parental advice but it still didn't take on any importance until after the age when it did with me. Why is this?

Time horizons and the credit crunch.

For sure we all do not take into account the passing of time when we are young. I am guilty of this for sure. Would I have taken action earlier if I had recieved much more information - probably not. Why you ask. Well things have changed dramatically in the past decade. In my early thirties you had at least the security of a job with a good pension and you were definitely going to retire at a reasonable age.

Fast forward to the present and the scene is way different.

• Security of tenure in you job is often non-existent.
• You may well not get to choose when you retire.
• Pensions have changed and are often no longer provided by your company.
• The retirement age is getting to be a bigger number.
• After retirement actually happens, you will find it even more difficult to get a job to help boost your savings.
• The job market itself has shrunk and according to experts will stay that way for a long time.

Why don't we save then?

Doesn't this mean that providing for retirement is the key focus which all non retired folks should be working on. It is kind of ironic that we go to work to earn money, but if we were to put aside just 10% of our earnings from day one we would be able to manage when we retire. So why don't we?

It seems that there is no anchor or flashy marketing of retirement which makes us relate this word to ourselves. It always seems to be someone else who is retiring and isn't this something which older folks do? There is no plan for retirement which we then work to support with savings/money and this leads to us spending that portion of our income which we need to save.

Making a plan now

For those of us who have retired already it is clearly too late. However for those of our family who have not yet started to plan it really is essential to do so now. Perhaps we should start a campaign to bring this message into our schools, universities, and certainly into our employers HR departments. Let me know what you think please.