“You are what you think”. A lot has to be said for POSITIVE THINKING – and the most important is what Henry Ford said.

You are right either way. If you think you can, you can. If you think you cannot, you cannot.

What are the thoughts that are HURTING your Retirement corpus formation?

I think the following thoughts are hurting your corpus formation, but I daresay that there could be more, much more, and these are not in any particular order:

1. I am making a sacrifice by saving for retirement: Banish such a thought. At the age of 27 you are not in a position to even realize how thankful you will be at 54 for this early start, and a disciplined effort at creating a retirement corpus. Just imagine you are buying FINANCIAL FREEDOM – fairly obvious, the earlier that you can retire, the better. When I say retirement I mean financial freedom!

2. I am SAVING for my retirement: Sorry folks you cannot afford to just save for investing. You need to be in more aggressive assets like equity if you need to create a sensible corpus for your RETIREMENT.

3. I am SAVING enough for retirement: At a young age of say 30 it is very difficult to know how much you should invest for creating a retirement corpus, but I can assure you MOST of the people I know are not doing enough. No need to panic, but go to calculators that tell you how much you require for retirement.

4. My financial planner has said I require Rs. 4 crores, and I will head there. Oops sorry, that is a fantastic bench mark….but you will keep changing the goal post depending on ‘life style creep’ and inflation. Unfair world, is it not?

5. Entitlement Spending: Everybody has a power bike, a DSLR, a vacation in Leh, a vacation in Egypt,….please fund your RETIREMENT before you play around with luxury toys. Such thoughts dramatically reduce your ability to invest / save.

6. I am still young: Amusing. I know of 22 year old kids who have made a start INVESTING for retirement, and on the other hand I meet 40 year old people who think that they have forever to start saving for investing. Amazed, I even found a 57 year old SO DAMN OVER CONFIDENT that his Gurgaon house will fetch his RETIREMENT CORPUS, I was stunned. He has been trying to sell it for the past 8 months – he is NOWHERE near the sale. If he does not get an extension for 3 years, there is no chance that he can retire. His Gurgaon flat will fetch him cash for say 10 years. No guesses for what he will do after that. I did ask him my favorite question: “How long are you hoping to be in Retirement?’

7. I have asked Subra whether this is the best plan and I am waiting for him to respond: Sorry chief expect only pointers from me, I am not going to plan your personal plan, UNLESS I have met and know you. Waiting for the PERFECT PLAN is fine, but you will NEVER START….

8. I do not want to retire: Develop your hobbies, support groups, fun groups, etc. …YOU WILL NEED THESE people when you retire….