The office cubicles floor layout of the three old men.
The 60 is counting down to his voluntarily retirement in 69 days while 57 and 61 are facing with harsh reality of their current cash flow and net worth position and realized that they can't afford any voluntary retirement at 62.
They hope that their bosses will extend their re-employment to 67.
Many may think that these oldies in Uncle8888's generation got their HDB property cheap. Right? How come like that?
How come they can't afford to retire and their Future You "blame" or thank them?
Suffered Large Losses
Both 57 and 61 have lost heavily in their CPF Investment Account in AFC (1998). Who to blame? Blame the Government for not having the foresight to protect CPF members. Government only knew how to react and introduce CPFIS investable fund up to 35% of CPF OA balance. (Go to CPF website for clearer details)
57 learnt his extreme painful lesson and chopped finger and NO LONGER talk about stocks.
Still NEVER till Uncle8888's last conversation with him on Uncle8888's "passive" income from his stock investment portfolio.
61 learnt his painful lessons and stopped speculating. His regret was not learning short-term trading and long-term investing strategies earlier.
Residential Property as Retirement Fund
Both of them took the path of their residential property as their retirement fund.
57 stopped speculating in stocks and took the property path. He has upgraded from three room HDB to 5 room HDB and currently still have a few years of mortgage to go.
He couldn't meet his MSS (BRS) at age of 55 and automatically has to pledge 50% of his HDB flat to meet MSS (BRS).
61 bought 5 room HDB as he was already thinking ahead of property as good asset. He was fully convinced of his view after losing big in stock market during AFC.
Your Resident Home as Retirement Fund?
It is NOT as easy or straight forward as many would like to think!
When their retirement get nearer; their worries are getting real and bigger.
They can't partially withdraw their HDB asset to fund their yearly or monthly household expenses.
They cannot suka suka just sell or take partial profits. They have to carefully plan out their "Future" and NOT to repeat another fatal mistake!
Not stressful. Then what?
Posts
Thank you for the timely reminder. Don't think we should blame the gahment for not limiting CPFIS investable fund. One is responsible for one's own money. Most think CPF OA is non-tangible money until the day you retire or nearing to 55.
ReplyDeleteMay be these 2 guys has large sum of cash in the bank assuming that they save and don't invest (no cap gain/loss).
ReplyDeleteLike one of your lady college save >60 of her pay and fund her retirement from interest?
lol.
When we are many years away from retirement; we may think that is easy to downgrade our residential home and then use the net proceeds as part of our retirement fund; but we are nearer; we may find it not easy to press that execution button when the property market is in the down cycle. Thinking is so easy but when time to press the execution button it is so much harder.
DeleteThat's remind me that many baby boomers could not retire due to dot com bubble and GFC.
DeleteTrue. Once we sustain large losses in investing; we may find it harder to recover and may end up much less to retire.
DeleteNewbies must beware and not blinded by some investment bloggers as most of them are already successful themselves and continue to blog regularly.
Those investment bloggers who have failed will quietly leave the blogosphere so you don't read them anymore.
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ReplyDeleteThe 2 guys must be secretly envy the lady colleague also.
ReplyDeleteNow that's a real cash cow.
DeleteSometime, I think some investment bloggers have over glorified retail investing as wealth building. No?
ReplyDeleteYes I agree.
DeleteI asked the question of how much paper losses have they incur when some keep boasting about "passive" dividend income from reits. No one have yet to answer that question, But judging from the index, I guess it's probably 20 to 30% paper losses. What is the point of getting 7% yield when one loses 20% in capital? So the young ones have to be careful to follow those "advice" blindly and anyhow buy. Some ppl have their own agenda (not saying all bloggers are like that), they may already be heavily vested and want more ppl to support the price.
Downgrading paths is an alternative for those with weaken financial situation. Is not going to give you us a merry land. In down market, you sell cheap, you buy cheap too.
ReplyDeleteGov can help prevent but they do not cause the problem. Both of them need to be a man of their own decision.