Good and bad of retirement
Many pensioners struggling, survey shows
ANEW retirement survey has identified concerning statistics for pensioners in South Africa, with only a quarter of retirees expected to maintain their standard of living.
The 34th Sanlam Benchmark Survey was released recently after it polled more than 1 000 retirement fund members, pensioners, trustees, employer representatives, and principal officers.
The survey cites two main reasons for the concern – retirement fund members claiming their savings after retrenchment or resignation, and passivity towards planning for retirement.
These are points with which self-supporting Summerstrand resident and retired businesswoman Mercia de Beer, 90, strongly agreed.
“Even though I was married, I still took out my own policies because you can’t rely on anybody GOOGLE is taking a popular “oops” feature out of its experimental “labs” and making it a permanent part of the web version of Gmail.
The “undo send” feature gives Gmail users from 10 to 30 precious seconds to claw back an e-mail sent prematurely. Once you hit “send” on a Gmail – by accident or on purpose – a thin yellow bar tells you the else to look after you. My husband has passed on and my children have their own struggles,” De Beer said.
“But the most important thing is preparation. Whatever your investment of choice may be, invest in something.
“I invested in property, which I would recommend. I put down the deposit for all six of my children’s houses with the one property paying off the next.
“And where you can you should pump as much money into those investments.
“You won’t work forever, so pay as much as you can while you are earning a salary.”
De Beer’s advice was in line with a point raised in the survey that 43% of the nation’s retirees are still paying off debt in their retirement years.
Other challenges include investment illiteracy and still having to take care of adult or child dependants.
According to the survey, 66% of pensioners still have dependants relying on them, while, on message was sent‚ and gives you the option to either read the message or take it back.
Whether a hastily worded “nastygram”‚ an unfortunate “reply all” or a half-written job cover letter sent prematurely‚ potential damage can be undone.
In a world of “no takebacks”‚ recapturing an already launched missile – ahem‚ message – before it can be opened is a boon.
“Undo send” will be turned off by average, pensioners first receive financial advice just 10½ years before retirement.
Missionvale resident Katie Ncwedi, 72, said: “In my day we didn’t know about things like retirement funds.
“I worked on a farm in Addo most of my life and returned home after my daughter fell sick and died.
“Now I live in her house with my two grandchildren.
“I do receive a government pension but it is not much and it is a constant struggle for us.
“I have funeral policies but not really investments. But we have managed for the past eight years,” Ncwedi said.
Stand-out facts from the survey include that 77% of fund members withdraw their available funds due to retrenchment or resignation; 63% use this to reduce debt, and 33% use a portion for daily expenses. Of these, 54% regret withdrawing the money.
In addition, 36% had no personal savings aside from their retirement fund. default but can be enabled in the “general” tab of Gmail settings as of today. For people who have already been using the “labs” version, the setting will be turned on by default.
Again‚ this is only available for people using Gmail on a website‚ as opposed to a smartphone app.
Google also said the feature was recently added to Inbox‚ its app that aims to rethink e-mail. – Wall Street Journal