My perfect retirement consists of eating garlic bread for breakfast every day, playing Settlers of Catan at every lunch, and bingeing trash anime every night. This is my dream. Retirement villages of the distant future, please take note.
However, I’m also lowkey concerned that I’ll never be able to retire. Thanks to the cost of living crisis destroying my bank account, I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever be able to get a leg up in society. I wonder if the financial security that makes retiring feasible will always be out of reach.
Moreover, when I’m feeling more doomer-pilled, I wonder how the climate crisis will impact the concept of retiring. Seriously, if the planet doesn’t get its act together, will it be too flooded and burnt to relax in?
For better or worse, I’m not the only person who’s considering the fact that retiring might be an unattainable goal. In a survey conducted by Finder, 1057 Australians were asked if they’re concerned that they won’t have enough money in retirement to get by. A whopping 28% of respondents said that they don’t think they’ll have enough cash to live on.
A further 34% said that they could retire, but they would probably need to cut back on their spending. Another 19% haven’t thought about this issue.
Only 18% of the survey’s respondents believe that they have enough money to live well while they’re retired.
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“Millions of Australians are not actually able to save enough to walk away from their jobs. Most people aspire to retire in their mid-60s – but many don’t have enough for a comfortable retirement,” said the Finder’s Money Editorial Manager, Alison Banney.
“The cost of living crisis has made it especially hard to plan for.”
However, Banney also has some advice for those folks who want to prioritise making retiring more attainable.
“If you’re able to contribute a little bit extra to your super now, it will make a big difference by the time you retire,” she said.
“It’s also important to make sure you’ve only got one super fund in your name, so you’re not losing thousands of dollars to multiple sets of fees.”
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