I just came back from my holiday trip to Europe a week back, and I received a lot of emails, whatsapp messages, asking me specifically on retirement planning in Singapore. I am still following up, one by one. 🙂
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Since the Rebecca Lim’s fiasco, many of you have asked me on how to calculate how much you need to save today, so that you have enough money to retire comfortably in Singapore, and the best part, how to do it in the shariah compliant way. 🙂
(My mum and dad approaching their retirement years, relaxing at Table Mountain, in South Africa)
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I always share with my clients that how much you need to save today, is dependent on the type of retirement lifestyle that you want to lead when you choose to retire.
You choose whether you want to lead a sedentary lifestyle or a lavish one when you retire, or simply maintain your existing lifestyle.
Many of you, if you have been spending, example, $3000/mth today, you would not want to drastically reduce your spending power to $1000/mth when you retire right? Simply because you are not working and there is no cashflow coming in as before. 🙂
You will want to MAINTAIN your lifestyle.
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Today, I am going to share with you a very simple yet powerful retirement planning concept.
Let say you are 30 years old now. You would like to retire at the age of 60. Mortality age for average Singaporeans is about 90 years old. (Of course, there are people who lives much longer, but we take the age of 90 for this example.)
The period from 30 to 60 years of age is what we call the Accumulation Period.
Whereas from 60 years old to 90, is what we call the Retirement Period.
My question to you is this: When you retire, how much do you want to spend every single month?
If you ignore inflation, and you ignore investment return on your savings, how much exactly do you want to spend every single month?
$3000/mth? $5000/mth? $10,000/mth?
Write Your Answer On A Piece Of Paper: I want to spend $________ every single month when I retire.
Now take a look. Your ACCUMULATION PERIOD is 30 years and your RETIREMENT PERIOD is also 30 years.
Ignoring inflation and investment return, if you want to spend example, $3000/mth, when you retire, you have to also save $3000/mth today, for you to retire.
Right? 🙂
How much you need to save today, is dependent on the type of retirement lifestyle that you want to lead when you choose to retire.
You choose whether you want to lead a sedentary lifestyle or a lavish one when you retire, or simply maintain your existing lifestyle.
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When I share this concept with my clients, most are astounded. It is a very simple, but profound concept that you can use to calculate, how much you need to save now, every month to have the DESIRED retirement lifestyle you can have in the future.
Of course. After you know roughly, how much to save, the next question is how to grow that money, the shariah compliant way in Singapore.
Many of my clients understand that I build a long term advisor-client relationship with them to help them grow their investable assets (go download and read my book, if you don’t know what is investable assets) and at the same time grow their networth the shariah compliant way in Singapore.
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In Singapore, there are a few ways to grow your investable assets, the shariah compliant way.
Firstly, buy shariah compliant stocks, direct from the market. (recommended only if you have the financial knowledge)
For me, this is a good long term strategy to include shariah compliant stocks in your portfolio to grow your money for your retirement.
Have a watchlist of shariah compliant stocks, and start doing your homework.
Download the companies’ annual report. Know how the company makes money. Calculate their profitability, gearing and investment ratios. Analyse deeply the trends, if the gross profit margin, the net profit has increased consistently for the past 10 years.
If the sales has increased, gross profit has increased, net profit has increased over the years, go through the company’s cashflow statement, to check that the company do not just have credit sales (close sales but customers owe them money in credit) , but can also are able collect money (cold, hard cash) from their sales.
There are many fundamental analysis that you should do when analysing and choosing shariah compliant stocks. The above is just 1 example. Learn about them first, before investing your money direct to the stock market. This is important because you would not want yourself to involve with maysir (speculation), when your niat (intention) is already to grow your money the shariah compliant way.
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Secondly, buy commodities like physical gold bar.
I see this more of a wealth preservation strategy. In your effort to accumulate your wealth, it is good to diversify and commodities like gold.
However, make sure that you buy gold bar, you can sell immediately to the seller if you urgently need money.
By the way, I wrote a 4000 words report on investing in gold. If you are my existing clients, and you are interested to learn more, you can request it from me (and get advice when you meet me for financial review). 🙂
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Third strategy, which is my favourite strategy is investing your money in shariah compliant funds. This is my favourite strategy because I can do it passively.
I will skip my explanation on what is the difference between shariah compliant fund and conventional ones. What is riba, maysir, gharar. Imam Nawawi Riba rulings etc2…. (If you are interested to learn more, just fix an appointment with me, and I will share more)
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In this blog post, I will share why investing in equity funds are different that investing in stocks. I will speak in the perspective of making money ONLY. Usually, when my clients plan for their retirement, they will have a long investment time horizon. Perhaps 15-25 years.
The thing about investing in stocks, specifically penny stocks (small caps stocks), the stock price can go up and can go down, and can even go bust.
A professional manage shariah compliant fund works differently. The fund price can go up and it can go down, however, long term wise, it will always go up. Why?
Firstly, inflation. Example, you love drinking coffee. You drink it everyday.
(An “atas” coffee, I made for myself… )
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How much did you pay for your coffee? $1?
Another 10 more years, will your coffee still cost you $1?
Definitely NO, because the price will have increase because of inflation. Similarly, because the price of the coffee increase, when you check the trading, profit and loss statement of the coffee company, the sales will increase, the gross profit will increase, the net profit will increase, everything in the financial statement will increase, thus the stock price and in effect the fund price will also collectively increase.
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2nd reason, human population growth. Now, maybe in Asia Pacific, I assume, 10 million people drink coffee everyday. Another 10 years, will the figure remain the same?
Definitely NO.
Due to human population growth, more people will drink coffee. Similarly, because more people drink coffee, when you check the trading, profit and loss statement of the coffee company, the sales will increase, the gross profit will increase, the net profit will increase, everything in the financial statement will increase, thus the stock price and in effect the fund price will also collectively increase.
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3rd reason, you have professionals to manage your fund. There is a set of rules (qualitative and quantitative) for fund managers have to follow when selecting stocks specifically when it comes to shariah compliant fund.
One of the examples, if that the gearing ratio cannot be above 30%. Thus diligence is exercised when the fund managers select shariah compliant stocks in the shariah compliant equity fund.
If the stocks does not meet the criterias, and at the same time, are not performing well, it will be removed by the fund manager and replace by a better performing one. That is why shariah compliant fund price, specifically, can go up and down. However, long term wise, it will always go up.
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4thly, specifically for my clients, you have me to rely on, giving you advice when to do a top up, when the fund price is selling cheap. Example, you buy apples today. Price of an apple cost you $1. One day, it drops to $0.99.
$0.95.
And $0.90. What will you do? Just ignore it. You dollar cost average.
However, when the apple price goes down to $0.70, $0.60, financial advisors like me, will ask you to buy more apples, so that when the price goes up back to $0.90, $0.99 or even $1.10, you make more money. You enhance your portfolio returns by so much more. 🙂
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Alright….. I hope you benefit from my sharing. This is a recording of a video (which I recorded 6 years ago) , of a simple way on how to gauge how much money you need to save so that you can retire comfortably in the future.. A simple yet powerful strategy on retirement planning. Watch it now!
P.S. : If you find my sharing beneficial, do share this blog post with your love ones. Insya’Allah… 🙂
P.P.S. By the way, if you wish to discover a simple & halal way to create a positive monthly cashflow and calculate your net worth for FREE, then please click here…
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