When is the right time to plan your retirement?

Imagine yourself on a lovely sun-drenched beach with sugar-white sands and blue-green water lapping lazily at the shore and in your hand is an icy coloured… it’s your retirement, and you’re loving it!

Nice dream, right? Unfortunately, reality can be very different. Retirement, for many of us, is a far away concept that we think about very vaguely and because of this we fail to properly prepare for it.

Some of us are lucky to work in organisations where a mandatory pension plan is put in place, but even with that, it’s becoming clear that we need to make our own plans for retirement. Recent events have shown that relying on government-provided pensions can be fool-hardy at best.

To start with, about 80 per cent of us underestimate how much we’ll need to maintain the lifestyle we currently live post retirement. Also, we fail to factor in inflation. Inflation simply means that the value of N100 today will not be the same by the time you retire.

So what can you do? The best thing is to start planning for your retirement now. We’ll repeat that popular saying that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.

So, what steps can you take to protect the future you from uncertainty and stress?
Kick off your goals pronto! –Now Is the Best Time for You to Invest
From the moment the whistle blows at the start of any game, there is only one thought in every experienced striker’s mind; how do I score? For them it’s never too early.

In the investment world, it is no different. The earlier you start investing, the longer your money has time to grow. That way you can retire early and enjoy the fruits of your hard –earned labour. This is something Mike Tyson failed to do! Shooting into success early in his life with a career that earned him around $400million, Mike was busy being a bigger boy around town, spending instead of investing his millions, so much that by the time he hit 37, he was already declared bankrupt!

Emmanuel Babayaro, David James, Marion Jones, the list goes on, successful sports men and women who failed to invest when the going was good are now on the sidelines, living on scraps.

Early good financial planning and investing is particularly crucial if you’re a sportsman or sportswoman, because of the average retirement age of 30-35 years, due to injuries, reduced fitness levels, aging etc. In comparison, other professionals like engineers, marketers, lawyers, doctors, etc. are just reaching the peak of their careers at around the same age of 40 to 41 years, so have a longer time to earn, invest and grow their money for retirement. A research conducted by the charity group Xpro in 2013, found that 40% of former footballers became bankrupt within five years of retiring.

Read also: How to overcome financial stress

As a sports person, your career starts a lot earlier, sometimes even while still in school, than other professional careers. It’s like earning what other professional careers will fetch you in 30 years of service and a lifetime of pension in just 15 years. That’s why you need to start investing from the first paycheck.

Now while the saying holds true that the best time to start investing was yesterday, it‘s important not to feel rushed into making investments that you don’t fully understand. There are a whole range of investment possibilities out there, from the stock and bond markets, mutual funds, to exchange traded funds (ETFs), and so on. The key is to know what you want to invest and for how long.
Credit: Wealth maker club

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