Investing is the new pension
WAKE UP CALL!! Pensions won’t take care of you any more, you need to start looking at educating yourself in your own investments:
Those of us in our 40’s and 50’s from Europe are probably the last generations who will be able to eke out a living on a state pension. It will not be a salubrious life by a long shot, but we probably won’t starve. Those of you under 40, you are sh@t out of luck sorry, you will not eat well enough to make it for 5 years after you retire if you rely on the state!
Governments keep pushing the pensionable age forward because they don’t want to admit that they just cannot afford pensions any more.
In UK Pensions were a crafty idea brought in back in 1908 to give men over 70 some money at the end of their life, and they were not kidding; ‘end of their life,’ because back then, very few men made it to 70 years of age.
The first “old age” pension was introduced by the Government , paid five shillings a week (worth around £14 today). At a time when the average life expectancy was 47, it was only available to men aged over 70.
Sounds like a profitable plan for the government, pay them for around 45 years and they probably won’t have to pay you any pensions back, as you would be dead and gone at 50 years of age!
Now however people are living a lot longer so the pensions department are begrudgingly losing a lot of money now having to pay out longer.
Economists will tell you its the work force now that pay the pensions, well if that is true, we are doomed, because I don’t know if you have noticed; but since my Grandfather was a child people had a lot more kids than people do now. My Grandfather was one of 8 children, my Father had 5 children, I had 2 children, and now, one parent families are quite the norm, see a pattern here?
The baby boomers, kids born after the the 2nd World War till the mid sixties were the largest ever group to move through the 50’s 60’s 70’s 80’s and now this group are starting to retire, living longer and demanding more of the government than ever before.
Simple statistic is there are not enough kids born in the 90’s in the taxable workforce now to balance out pension money!
Private pensions
Companies are not as generous as they were when I was first starting out in the work place in the 1980’s. Pensions contributions were quite good then, so a private pension to top up your state pension was the normal way to make sure you could actually go to the pub once a week and heat your homes without stressing out about it when you are old an grey.
Many recessions later and the shift from Industrial age to the digital age has made it harder and harder for big companies to be profitable, and when they are less profitable, bang goes your generous pension contributions.
Have you noticed there are a lot less big companies around now? 30 years ago almost every city would have a dozen large corporations that employed the majority of the people in the area.
All that pension contributions, private, and through your regular pay to the government, did; was pay a financial company to take your money and invest in many different things to diversify, and if you saw the Trillions of dollars they made over the last 30 years from your money and the minute percentage they paid back to you, you would fall out your rocking chair you are making.
If you really want to retire gracefully and have enough money to at least keep up your living standards you are used to now, you will either have to invest around 60% of your earnings monthly from the day you start your first ever job until you retire (based on average earnings), or learn to invest in startups, established businesses, Gold, commodities, Crypto currency, Fiat Forex, real estate, emerging markets B.R.I.C. etc.
Entrepreneurs like real estate tycoons who probably started with a little two up two down as we called starter homes in the UK, and borrowed of friends and family to survive, and a few times when growing their business was probably avoided in the pub by their nearest and dearest.
“Shoot shoot there he is, probably going to ask us to buy him a pint, and go on all night about pensions, being a millionaire and want us to invest in something, quick let’s go somewhere else”
Help the startup
You can start investing in your friend’s, who want to be entrepreneurs, businesses, there is a whole community now of people who are leaving the workforce or have been made redundant and are trying to go it on their own, and guess what? there is no salary!
Sadly however; society still seems to tick-tock in the Industrial age of salaries at end of month and all bills settled, and with what is left it’s off to the pub we go. Direct Debits and Banks still love it if you have a job and you give them regular money because that’s how they think the world still breathes.
I hope to see a day when banks have moved with the times and mortgage companies are more entrepreneur friendlier can you imagine them saying;
“Okay, here is what you have to pay this year for your home, whenever you can, let’s see how we are at the end of the year and adjust.”
Not the blind panic we see now:
RED NOTICE: “You are two months over your mortgage payments here is a fine of 100 pounds just to help you along. Get a job Douchebag!”
Your friends who are inventing things in their garage or starting a website to sell stuff , don’t all have big redundancy payouts and some are going through their private hell of having to borrow money to survive as they now are not part of the cult of work, so sometimes they ask you for help.
Stop for a second try to understand what it is they are doing, and how brave they actually are, and if you can see their legacy and positive impact they may have on the planet, you may just be helping out the next Steve Jobs, and by investing a little bit in them, means you get rich by doing nothing at all, Pension sorted!
Netmedia is a media company based in Southeast Asia we started as a social media company, we begged and borrowed of friends till they avoided us in the pub, except a few who I count as my real friends, till we reached a critical mass and the business started returning the favour and taking care of us.
We then got into sales leads through lead generation and after we saw 6,000+ companies register on our site, some of our registered businesses started asking if we knew investors, and Investors asked if we knew anyone with a decent project with potential, then we started marrying business up, and now we can offer shares in our startup.
The world has changed a lot, you need to wake up and notice and start to look after yourself financially and learn about money. Schools did not teach us about money as they wanted us to blend into the workforce and breathe the tax back into society through jobs, that are harder and harder to come by, and pay bills on time!
The government doesn’t really care about you, and will be the hardest person to find in the pub to borrow some money for heating and food when you are retired!
To have a look at what we have to invest in, or if you are a struggling startup contact us for some sympathy and maybe we can find you funding and a maybe even a monthly salary, remember .. a salary?.. oh come on!
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