According to AsiaOneNews:

MOST Singaporeans believe that they would not have enough Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings for retirement and, many also do not have a plan to reach their savings goals, a survey by AXA Life Insurance Singapore found.

The insurer conducted an online poll this month involving 100 participants between 18 and 45 years of age. Given a 10-year horizon, 49 per cent said that they would save for retirement while 26 per cent said that they would save for their children’s education. The rest wished to set aside money for property, travel and business enterprises.

‘Retirement is still quite a top priority for Singaporeans,’ said AXA Life Insurance Singapore’s head of brand, marketing and communications Angela Lau. ‘Even in downtimes, Singaporeans . . . are able to look beyond the immediate term and focus on the long term.‘

Read the full “Advertisement” Article at AsiaOneNews:

- Dear readers, this article is pure and simple…it’s a advertisement for AXA Life Insurance’s retirement insurance plans with a survey of only 100 people does no justification on the whole scene of Singapore.

However, the assumption that CPF is not enough for retirement is very accurate due to many factors.

1. Inflation – The purchasing power of our dollar may diminish over time due to ever expanding growth of our money supply and global trend of “bail out” the corporation.

2. Depletion of Fossil Fuel – The ever depletion of fossil fuels makes your cost of living of modern age using cars & electricity so much more expensive. This is going to be true regardless of the “fake” news of “plenty” of oil supply in the Straits Times 19 January 2009.
3. Medical Cost of Old Age – As one realized that our government hospital subsidies does not cover the “moderately rich” due to the problems of poor not getting enough subsidies or “subsidies” exploitation by the rich.

   However as our purchasing power of Singapore dollar goes down due to increasing cost of medicine & hospitalization cost goes sky rocketing….those who are considered rich MAY be considered poor in the near future…however will be left out of the subsidies class C ward.

4. Housing Cost – Some old folks like my mother had used up their HDB subsidies to buy & sell their HDB more then 2 times due to divorce and other “reasons” and did not really profit from the sale due to renovation cost & other cost like furnitures and etc.

   The old aged may not be able to buy cheaper HDB and may not get loan from HDB due to their dependancies inability to get a stable job.

The CPF Annunity plan is only good for those who want pocket money to buy sweets in their old age due to the rising inflation cost living.

There are several solutions to the idea of preparing for our old age.

1. Buy a Private Property to RENT out to others and stay other places (in relatives) – this can be a joint purchase with family members and get the proceed for retirement.

2. Investment – is risky due to current investment climate however you can invest in physical items of value. Some say gold is good bet however I think it’s better to buy a item that can be rented out or loan out.
   • Property
   • Cars/Van or modes of transportation
   • Bicycles/Electric bicycles
   • Jewellery
   • Servers
   • Hard Disk Spaces
3. Insurance - It is as good as the next Lehman Brothers as they function just like another investment company that takes your money to invest by their “fund managers” that diversify into several risk sectors. This is most prevalent in their “investment linked insurance policies”

   Like all “High Return & High Risk” products, when it’s too good to be true…usually it is.

   However, there are non-investment insurance that may be important such as personal accident, medical, hospitalization plans which is cheap and should be a must for old folks.

4. Precious Metals – I believe in metals that can be USED in the modern day and widely used types….there are also metals that are rare and low in quantity. However, you does need some kind of proper equitment to analyze the “purity” of these metals.
   • Gold
   • Platinum
   • Copper
   • Silver
   • Steel

   However, nowadays due to modern advancement in metal alloy…it’s kind of hard to differentiate an pure metal or alloy hence do buy only properly minted coins with verifiable certification or direct from banks.

5. Paper Assets – these are simply shares & digital numbers in your broker’s computer or server. It’s very easy to play around with paper assets hence it is even easier to lose them all…highly NOT recommended.

   Unless you have a mountain of money to “experiment”, it’s harder to liquidate these paper assets during emergency.

6. Starts An Business – On the contrary of popular belief that you need to be MBA or a degree holder to be a boss, more then 70% of these bosses don’t really hold even a degree in the field of their business!

   They usually hire the best to do the job they can’t, however you need a start up capital to do a business with logical thinking & business sense.

   If you think you have the time to experiment then do try it as it’s proven that even during emergency times….trading in public market or black market still put meals on the table.

I like to add more to these however I need time to think harder and out of the box….maybe you can consider reading my “Sustainable Singapore” post…and think of how to be sustainable.

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