Monday, January 26, 2009

Retirement savings



Post by Po-cheng Huang


In the economy that has consumer spending being accounted for 2/3 of the GDP, Americans are encouraged to spend. When their spending exceeds their income, the financial system provides easy access to credit so they can borrow. Then therefore ended up paying the monthly minimum payments to the banks to keep the game rolling.
The question we should be asking is “how did people put themselves into this?” Research survey showed that 1/3 of participants do not save at all, 1/3 doesn’t save enough, and only about 28% report that they have met their monthly saving targets. Then the question on how do people even start saving, if they are simply using their paycheck to pay the monthly interests? I tend to think it’s the environment that is influencing the people. It makes them admire luxury goods they saw on commercials, going after the life style that they can hardly afford through borrowing, and ultimately when time is bad, they go bankrupt, with everything they thought they own got taken away from them.
To fix the problem with retirement in America is simple, effective retirement planning is essential, but people need to realize that they can not spend money that they don’t have, and learn to properly allocate their income, until then they can start talking about saving for retirement.


1 comment:

  1. For my retirement I do have already planned something. What I did is I opted for a pension plan scheme so that I have not to worry at all for any kind of financial expense after my retirement. An effective retirement planning should be carried out and people should not ignore it at all.

    ReplyDelete