Retirement: what’s wrong?
What went wrong with most Retirement Plans?
Well here is my guess. One big assumption is that you inherit NOTHING, and you pay NOTHING for your parent’s expenses. Or it is equal – so you do not get any headwind or tailwind.
- You earn from age 25 to age 55 years. This means you earn for 30 years. This money has to a) repay educational loans – incurred befroe you were 25, and last till 100. That’s tough.
- You were born at the wrong time – being born in 1980 was fine but by the time you started investing it was 2015 – the market was mature.
- You have taken a huge loan to buy a house in 2012 and last when you saw your home loan figure has not changed much. The 30 year loan is sucking up a lot of interest, and the #$%^ house has not appreciated.
- Average Return in Equities seems to be a joke – you have earned nothing near the average of “17% including dividends”. Well you choose good funds which had a good probability of beating the market, but no clue what happened.
- Chased returns – kept Rs. 7L in Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank…
- Life did not happen so well – one job loss meant earning less in the next job and has not recovered since then.
- Subra told me, but I did not listen.
What are you planning to do now?
SS
Thanks sir, imho the killer is inflation. It is highly misunderstood and grossly underestimated. (i) How realistic is a bunch of guys coming up with CII numbers and projecting that as inflation for all goods in one figure? (ii) The interest earned in bank, is taxed point blank without accounting for inflation. inflation > interest – tax. People desirous of risk-free get fooled by the bank FD returns. (iii) Coming to investors, New policy, dividends are also taxed. it has scrapped DDT which was 10%, but also scrapped 115BBDA which subjects dividend to highest tax rate say 30% as per ones slab starting from Re1. An investors company already pays tax on it’s profit before dividend distribution. The LTCG on long term is also deterrent to investors. Already the investor is taking risk in equity. Without controlling inflation and other parameters, taxes are imposed. (iv) We also dont have schemes like 401(k) plans. We have PF. But there too, some chappal gheesing is required before you get the money.