Retirement planning in India has still not picked up as people are being more emotional towards their family and try to fulfil all their wants even if it means sacrificing their retirement. Most of the people depend on social security like EPF (Employee Provident Fund), NPS (National Pension System), annuity plans, etc. However, this is all without actually knowing the requirement, not even the ball park figure. As they have not planned for retirement, they indirectly ignore the risks in retirement.
Reduced earning
The major reason for retirement planning is reduced earnings during retirement. Majority of the people have low or probably no regular income in retirement unless they are receiving some sort of pension. Here the risk is that you may outlive your savings. So, the solution to this is to plan for retirement right from your first income or if you are already retired then having a retirement plan is a must to successfully ride the waves of uncertainties in retirement.
Longevity
This is one of the major risks that persist in retirement. Longevity is one of the factors in retirement which is an unknown factor. This means that no one can predict that how long anyone is going to live. Looking at the medical advancements there is a possibility of people living for even longer than expected. So, even while planning for retirement it is important to have your individual expected life expectancy. This means that the possibility of you living more or less is not comparable to your neighbor or even the average age up to which people live. Rather it is always better to stay at conservative end and keep life expectancy higher than the average life expectancy.
Unexpected expense
As we all know life is full of surprises and retirement is no exception to this. During retirement there is a possibility of an unexpected expense come your way. It can be in terms of health or big repairs or unexpected change in lifestyle. All these tend to erode your corpus and be the reason for you outliving your retirement corpus. This is the reason why having a retirement plan in place is a boon. While planning for retirement, emergencies are taken care of with the help of emergency fund. So, it is always advisable to plan for retirement and stick to the strategy to be at peace.
