How much should I save for Retirement?

The eternal question…

But seriously, when one is stealing, when has one stolen enough? A million? A billion? If you look at what has been happening in our beautiful country, it seems that there is absolutely no end to the greed and rent-seeking that goes on. For most of us though, we have to work very hard for our money and it takes a lifetime to build up what will hopefully be enough to live out our retirement years in relative comfort. It starts with what you put in…

Particularly in the light of market uncertainties and slow economic growth, investing at least 20% of gross monthly income into retirement funding, from age 23 until age 65 is the minimum that one should be putting away. Most of us are far short of that. The Sanlam Survey statistics say that most employed individuals are contributing to retirement funding at the rate of 11.7% of monthly income. Self-employed individuals contribute at around 3.8%. That’s definitely not enough!

Too often we encounter retirees who have played by the rules, never cashed out when changing jobs, diligently contributed to their company fund along with the company in terms of the rules, only to find that they are hopelessly short of funds to live on when retirement comes along. There is often this blind faith that as long as I have done what the company required me to do, it’ll be OK. Not so, unfortunately.