Skip to main content

Retirement Planning: How to retire healthy, wealthy & wise

It sounds a little odd. Thirty-year-old person is yet to get a receding hairline, but is already talking of retiring. Just five years ago, he did his post graduation from a reputed B-school in India, and is already a vice-president in a large entertainment company.

He has had a successful career till date, earning a seven-digit salary. Now, he is planning to throttle his career life even more for he doesn’t see himself working after the age of 50. For that’s the time he is planning to pursue his life-time passion of wildlife photography.

This person is not the only one who aspires to retire early. But could that be a reality for this person and many other people? While the idea of a retired life could be a permanent good bye to all the work-related stress, the fear is of outliving your savings. Financial planners, therefore, advices a proper retirement plan to target a kitty that could earn enough income to sustain one’s lifestyle.

Take the case of this person who is planning to retire at the age of 50. And the life expectancy say is 70 years. Which means he needs income for 20 more years after retiring. Our analysis shows that anywhere from Rs 1-4 crore is needed to be build as a retirement kitty to earn an income of Rs 5-10 lakhs post-retirement for individuals aged between 25 and 40. And these income levels have been adjusted for inflation. And to earn that kitty, monthly investments of Rs 6,000 upwards is needed.

So, for a 25-year-old, who has 25 years more to invest and build a kitty of Rs 1.9 crore to sustain income for 20 years, monthly investments required would be Rs 6,613 for 25 years. This is to target a kitty of an annual income of Rs 5 lakhs. For this person, to earn Rs 10 lakhs annually, he would need to invest Rs 21,526 on a monthly basis for 20 years. The expected investment return on portfolio has been assumed to be different (in the range of 8-15% pa) due to a varied investment horizon. As a thumb rule, as the age increases, expected investment return has been reduced.

Early beginner advantage

When you turn 25, you have least financial responsibilities. The chances are that you are staying with your parents. That saves you from paying rent. Also, it is likely that either or both your parents are still working. So they are not dependent on your income. That leaves you with huge surplus income to invest.

Once you near the age of 30, you may think of buying a house. That brings the EMI component to your monthly outgo. Then, as your responsibility increases — like a family, car, children’s education and their upbringing, there is limited scope for you to save, say financial planners.

An investor shows a higher risk appetite when he is young and kicking. The fact that an investor doesn’t have too much of financial responsibilities on his/her shoulder, influences him to look at riskier investments. The fear of losing the capital is often muted by the possible higher gains he/she may make in future. But this risk-prone behavior subsides with increasing age and responsibilities.

Facts and figures you must know

The decision to retire early has to be viewed from two sides. One is the willingness to retire and another is the ability to retire. When you start saving early, you see large chunks of money, hence, savings — which make you believe that you can afford to retire early. But when you pass through the age band of 24 to 45 years, you can’t foresee many contingencies.

If you have contingencies coming your way, it necessitates building some buffers into your financial plan to retire at 45. Today, life expectancy has gone up because of medical advancements. Medical costs too have gone up. Inflation is on the rise. So if you plan to retire at 45, you have to build a huge corpus to retire rich.

Now, this corpus depends on what you want to do after the retirement. It should be Rs 2-4 crore or upwards to have a basic living, especially if you decide to stay in a metro city. How inflation impacts your finances

To put it simply, say you want to earn an annual income of Rs 5,00,000 after 25 years. In that case, you should actually be earning an income of Rs 17,00,000 after 25 years. This is after adjusted for inflation of 5% annual inflation. One of the main reason why a youngster should target a larger kitty than otherwise.

Live more for future than present

If you plan an early retirement, then you are left with no option but to live for the future than live in the present. You need to make significant trade-offs in existing lifestyle to ensure a good retired plan. At the current life expectancy level, if you plan to retire at 45, your working life may work out to 20 years and life after retirement is likely to span over 30 years.

Another aspect you cannot ignore is that most important milestones in your life, including children’s education and their marriage will hit you when you are at mid 50. That implies you have to save even more as the Rs 2 crore to Rs 4-crore corpus is just enough to meet your monthly expenses. But the most important component of your investment portfolio is the healthcare-cover. This is especially relevant for today’s generation who want to retire early on account of mounting healthcare costs.

Life expectancy has also gone up significantly, which means that you may frequent the hospitals/medical centers in case of any health complaints. You can save on this cost with a comprehensive health cover.

In this story, one should note that the monthly investment requirement is just an indicative figure and, in fact, it comes down to the extent one has already invested. The idea is to target a kitty post retirement and work diligently towards getting it.

Popular posts from this blog

Tata Mutual Fund

Being a part of the Tata group, the fund has the backing of a very trusted brand name with strong retail connect. While the current CEO has done an excellent job in leveraging the Tata brand name to AMC's advantage, it is ironic that this was just not capitalised on at the start. Incorporated in 1995, Tata Mutual Fund remained an 'also-ran' fund house for around eight years. Till March 2003, it had a little over Rs 1,000 crore in assets and 19 AMCs were ahead of it. But soon after that the equation changed. It was the fastest growing fund house in 2004 and 2005. During these two years, it aggressively launched six equity funds, two debt funds and one MIP. The fund house as of now stands at No. 8 in terms of asset size. This fund house has a lot to offer by way of choice. And, it also has a number of well performing schemes. Tata Pure Equity, Tata Equity PE and Tata Infrastructure are all good funds. It also has quite a few good debt funds. The funds of Tata AMC are known to...

UTI Mutual Fund

Even though only a few of UTI’s funds are great performers, this public sector fund house has many advantages that its rivals do not. It has a huge base of retail equity investors and a vast distribution network. As a business, it looks stronger than ever, especially in the aftermath of credit crunch. UTI is, by a large margin, the most profitable fund company in the country. This is not surprising, since managing equity funds is more profitable than debt. Its conservative approach and stable parentage is likely to make it look more attractive to investors in times to come. UTI’s big problem is the dragging performance that many of its equity funds suffer from. In recent times, the management has made a concerted effort to improve performance. However, these moves have coincided with a disastrous phase in the stock markets and that has made it impossible to judge whether the overhaul will eventually be a success. UTI’s top performers are a few index funds, some hybrid funds and its inf...

Salary planning Article

1. The salary (basic + DA) should be low. The rest should come by way of such allowances on which the employer pays FBT and you don't pay any tax thereon. 2. Interest paid on housing loan is deductible u/s 24 up to Rs 1.5 lakh (Rs 150,000) on self-occupied property and without any limit on a commercial or rented house. 3. The repayment of housing loan from specified sources is also deductible irrespective of whether the house is self-occupied or given on rent within the overall ceiling of Rs 1 lakh of Sec. 80C. 4. Where the accommodation provided to the employee is taken on lease by the employer, the perk value is the actual amount of lease rental or 20 per cent of the salary, whichever is lower. Understandably, if the house belongs to a family member who is at a low or nil tax zone the family benefits. Yes, the maximum benefit accrues when the rent is over 20 per cent of the salary. 5. A chauffeur driven motor car provided by the employer has no perk value. True, the company would...

8 Investing Strategy

The stock market ‘meltdown’ witnessed since the start of 2005 (notwithstanding the recent marginal recovery) has once again brought to the forefront an inherent weakness existent in our markets. This is the fact that FIIs, indisputably and almost entirely, dominate the Indian stock market sentiments and consequently the market movements. In this article, we make an attempt to list down a few points that would aid an investor in mitigating the risks and curtailing the losses during times of volatility as large investors (read FIIs) enter and exit stocks. Read on Manage greed/fear: This is an important point, which every investor must keep in mind owing to its great influencing ability in equity investment decisions. This point simply means that in a bull run - control the greed factor, which could entice you, the investor, to compromise with your investment principles. By this we mean that while an investor could get lured into investing in penny and small-cap stocks owing to their eye-...

Debt Funds - Check The Expiry Date

This time we give you an insight into something that most debt fund investors would be unaware of, the Average Portfolio Maturity. As we all know, debt funds invest in bonds and securities. These instruments mature over a certain period of time, which is called maturity. The maturity is the length of time till the principal amount is returned to the security-holder or bond-holder. A debt fund invests in a number of such instruments and each of these instruments would be having different maturity times. Hence, the fund calculates a weighted average maturity, which would give a fair idea of the fund's maturity period. For example, if a fund owns three bonds of 2-year (Rs 30,000), 3-year (Rs 10,000) and 5-year (Rs 20,000) maturities, its weighted average maturity would be 3.17 years. What is the big deal about average maturity then, you may ask. Well, knowing a fund's average maturity is important because it tells you how sensitive a fund is to the change in interest rates. It is ...
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Invest in Tax Saving Mutual Funds Download Any Applications
Transact Mutual Funds Online Invest Online
Buy Gold Mutual Funds Invest Now