{"id":360449,"date":"2026-04-02T15:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/360449\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T15:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:14:12","slug":"retirement-lessons-you-cannot-afford-to-ignore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/360449\/","title":{"rendered":"Retirement lessons you cannot afford to ignore"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We all know by now, or should know, that planning for retirement is essential if you want to enjoy the so-called golden years with financial independence.<\/p>\n<p>As Warren Ingram says, retirement should be a time of enjoyment and relaxation, not one of stress.<\/p>\n<p>To get to that worry-free state, there are some retirement lessons you absolutely cannot afford to ignore.<\/p>\n<p>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.primediaplus.com\/2025\/08\/26\/deciding-how-to-be-paid-from-your-retirement-investments-once-you-do-retire?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=businesswrapaugust25\" data-anchor=\"?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=businesswrapaugust25\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Deciding HOW to be paid from your retirement investments once you do retire<\/a><\/p>\n<p>And with the world in such a state of flux at the moment, this is a good time to talk about it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For those of us who are still working and contributing to our savings and our investments, it is all very unsettling&#8230; but for people who&#8217;re already retired, that discontent goes up because you&#8217;re watching your investments go down at a time when you need to draw from them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The first thing to keep in mind is that people are living longer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When you say to people at age 50 or 55 that &#8216;we should probably plan for your life to run out somewhere at age 100&#8217;, usually they smile at you as if you&#8217;re a bit crazy. However, it is a reality that there are lots of people all around the world including in South Africa that comfortably live to their late 80s or early 90s.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ingram shares pointers to ensure your comfortable retirement.<\/p>\n<p>Longevity is a real factor<\/p>\n<p>Very few people will run out of money in year one of retirement. It is more likely that they could run out in year 20, says Ingram.<br \/>If you retire at 55, you could easily live another 35 years. Most people plan for 25 years of retirement and those extra 10 years is where things get desperate.<br \/>Your money needs to work almost as hard in retirement as it did while you were saving, so you need to be correctly invested.<\/p>\n<p>Healthcare costs escalate faster than you think<\/p>\n<p>Remember that medical aid premiums increase by well above inflation every year &#8211; often at 9% or 10%.<\/p>\n<p>People who retired at 55 and assumed R5,000 a month for medical aid are now paying double or triple that amount a decade later.<br \/>Healthcare is probably the single biggest budget-buster in early retirement, says Ingram.<\/p>\n<p>Lifestyle costs can be higher in retirement<\/p>\n<p>People often assume that their lifestyle costs will reduce in retirement.<br \/>However, for the early stages, they often increase their lifestyle spending<br \/>You are still active, healthy, travelling, eating out and picking up hobbies &#8211; plan<br \/>for higher spending in your 60s, not lower.<br \/>Later in life, your lifestyle costs might reduce but your medical costs might increase.<br \/>Rather aim for the same lifestyle costs as you had when working, Ingram advises.<\/p>\n<p>Your investments will experience a big drop during retirement<\/p>\n<p>As an example &#8211; if you retire and the market drops 30%, you&#8217;ll be selling some of your investments to fund your income at lower prices.<br \/>It&#8217;s very unlikely that you can time your retirement to avoid a big market crash, so rather plan that there could be a crash at any time, says Ingram.<br \/>That means you should have a bigger emergency fund in retirement i.e. one year, and have a portion of money invested in bonds and cash.<br \/>Diversification and rebalancing will help to limit your losses and allow you to draw from low risk assets during the market crashes.<\/p>\n<p>Scroll up to the audio player to listen to Ingram&#8217;s detailed retirement planning advice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We all know by now, or should know, that planning for retirement is essential if you want to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,44788,44789,44792,44791,44790,246,1258,111,43,786,139,69,244,245,44795,44794,44793],"class_list":{"0":"post-360449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ewn","10":"tag-ewn-news","11":"tag-ewn-south-africa","12":"tag-eye-witness-news","13":"tag-eyewitness-news","14":"tag-finance","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-news-today","19":"tag-newzealand","20":"tag-nz","21":"tag-personal-finance","22":"tag-personalfinance","23":"tag-prime-media-plus","24":"tag-primedia-plus","25":"tag-primedia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}