A Bernama report in today’s newspapers quotes the president of the Malaysian Financial Planning Council (MFPC), Vincent Kwo, as saying that the populace should plan for their retirement at a very young age.
“Most young people do not bother to think about retirement until too late in life. Being human, we always have to contend with the issue of dying too early or living too long. We may not have sufficient time to accumulate enough funds for our loved ones if we were to die too early,” he said in his address at the seventh Asian Conference on Pension and Retirement Planning in Kuala Lumpur.
Life expectancy, he said, has improved and many Malaysians could now expect to enjoy extended life spans of 15 to 20 years after retirement at age 60.
According to him, the crucial issue was the decline in the fertility and birth rates. “Young kids now having fewer children and at the same time the parents live longer, so it is a bigger burden for the children. That is why they need to save early on their own. They will live longer than us and they will have even fewer children to depend on as the trends are showing now,” he said.
Kwo also said that most people only saved for retirement through Employees Provident Fund. Pension savings were normally given out as a lump sum, which probably would be exhausted in less than five years, and the payments were not adjusted for inflation and cost of living.
Nowadays, a lot of retired parents will spend their retirement fund on their children for marriage, buying house purpose, etc. I seriously think we as the children should try not to use our parents’ money after coming out to work unless we can afford to pay them back regularly. These are the only funds they have kept for their old age, after the usage by the children in lump sum, the parents will leave almost nothing.