airtifrun.com

Singaporeans in general have not planned well for their retirement, with the majority of them polled - aged between 30 and 70 - saying that they saved only S$100 (US$72) to S$200 a month for their retirement, according to a survey by global bank HSBC. Such savings would work out to a total of less than S$100,000 for retirement, which is deemed to be inadequate.

Mr Walter de Oude, chief actuary and head of products and marketing from HSBC Insurance, told the Singaporean newspaper My Paper: "If you retire at the age of 65, for example, and live up to the age 95, there's no way you can sustain even a downgraded lifestyle for 30 years with S$100,000."

He says that Singaporeans could set aside regular savings for a financial plan that could grow into a nest egg by the time they reach retirement. However, they need to be careful that their savings are not eroded by inflation over time.

The HSBC poll also found that three in 10 Singaporeans were unsure about their retirement plans, and one in four did not believe in buying any form of insurance at any point in his lifetime. Nearly six in 10 also considered retirement as being free of debt.


Source: http://www.asiainsurancereview.com/pages/e-Weekly.asp?country=1

Theoratically speaking, personal finance can be broken down into 4 stages.

1) Wealth Protection
- In layman terms, insurance. Insurance is basically the transfer of risk from oneself to the insurance company in the event of something catastrophic and require a huge financial outlay. This is something that should be done since young. Protect your assets first before deciding to do something with it.

2) Wealth Accumulation
- Increasing the amount of wealth you have by working & saving them. Well you have to work to even have something to start increasing with right? Why is wealth accumulation important is to me especially for emergency funds (which i accumulated and have felt the importance of doing so because I ended up using them in VARIOUS emergencies this year!!)


ok let me continue...
 

3) Wealth Management
4) Wealth Distribution

"the 21st century is just like the 20th century except now in the 21st century people are scared of losing money everyday and the share prices are wayyyy lower." -Lisa Simpson