Are Doctors prepared for Retirement?

How prepared are you?

Fulfilling your dreams and goals with a mesmerizing smile on your face is what healthy retirement is all about. Planning for retirement goal early in life helps you to define your purpose even more clearly which helps you to create a symphony with your actions as well.

Most people believe that planning for an ideal Retirement is a responsibility which comes into the picture about 10-15 years before retirement. In the current situation, if we ask any youngster about their financial planning, the reaction for most of the crowd remains the same, which is that their 20’s or early 30’s are too early for retirement planning.

But just take a reality check in the current moment: We all complete our formal education, prepare for job interviews, get selected and start working in organizations. The beginning of working-life is all thrilling, big companies, large groups, pay-checks, the opportunity to live life on your own terms, there are so many emotions attached when you initially begin your work life, isn’t it? But after a few months or few years, most of the early definition you had made out of your initial work-life changes but amidst all of this change, there’s one thing which remains constant throughout; and that is your behaviour towards your salary or your equation with your money. 

It doesn’t matter how big a salary package you have with big incentives and everything but by the end of the month, the people having an INR 3 lac package and INR 50 lac and above package hang at the similar radar. It is a parallel line which hardly ever fails to repeat itself. 

As humans, it’s our duty to learn from our mistakes,  but, we get used to this monotonous mistake and instead of learning and changing the situation, we generalize our money mistake with the rest of the crowd. 

In the current world, the reason why you need to plan for your retirement today itself has grown stronger than olden days:

i) Sandwich Generation: Because it will be tough to rely on kids for the rest of your life.

ii) Inflation: The most underestimated factor that can defy the value of returns generated from investments. 

iii) Increasing Lifestyle Expenses: Everybody wants to live life in style.

iv) Switch From Luxurious to Necessities: As the luxurious have turned into necessities of life.

v) High Expectations: There was a time where people were satisfied with the calmness of life. Now everyone wants to run and fly and nobody is ready to stop.

vi) Rising Health Issues: The lifestyles have changed people who now live their life on weekends. We all have identified various short term pleasures that help us to substitute our emotions. 

vii) Adventurous Life: Everyone wants to pursue a higher meaning of life with adventure and experience.

Even after noticing all these factors, according to an internal survey, 65% of people don’t realize the need for retirement, while 61% don’t realize the need for asset allocation for this goal. This might be probably the reason that 52% of people still invest in traditional financial instruments, which may not even help beat inflation. There are retirement funds available in the market today but they are majorly hybrid in nature, offering a five-year lock-in period and tax benefits under section 80C. However, most of them are not flexible when it comes to asset allocation. 

If you start contributing early for your retirement goal, you might get more time to give your money to grow. The above reasons may not be the only reasons to force you to plan your retirement. However, if you are on the opposite side of the road and believe that there is no need of Retirement Planning for you right now, I am sure you definitely have much stronger reasons than the above-mentioned ones. 

The ideal time to contribute towards your retirement begins the moment you receive your first salary in hand. Start with SIPs and gradually shift your portfolio towards lower-risk investments based on your age and life stage. One can explore options that do not jeopardize key goals like retirement and customize asset allocation as per the risk appetite and tenure of investment.