The journey to financial freedom can be a slog. The struggle is real. mCubed Asset Solutions will be sharing our journey, to assist members of retirement funds, in achieving this freedom, as easily as possible.

Picture this. You wake up. Your kids call. The grandchildren can be heard in the background of the phone call, screaming happy birthday grandpa! You are 65 years young, on this beautiful day in June 2020. Retirement is around the corner and you have your last few days of work to get through. You get your notification of retirement form from your umbrella retirement fund. You complete it and get ready to discuss your wonderful retirement with your fund broker. Your broker walks in, you look at your latest benefit statement. You two get into a conversation on your potential retirement income and suddenly you feel a lot older than 65. What happened?

This scenario happens way too much in our industry. We see it every day. We strive to reduce this, but we all constantly live for the now and not for tomorrow. We understand, it is a difficult time for many. The COVID-19 virus has wreaked havoc worldwide and the potential end of this silent war, is no where to be seen. There are so many negatives currently out there, that it is difficult to see the positives. For the grandfather above, this is the reality. He will not be able to retire comfortably and now wishes that he did things differently. He dreams that he saved more of his salary every month and focused on his retirement from day 1. He wishes he met with the fund broker more often and when the broker set up meetings and training, he didn’t cancel. He should have transferred his benefits from his previous employers to the new fund and not have spent that money on unnecessary luxuries. He should have monitored his investment returns more closely and consulted with the broker to move his investments into less risky portfolios whilst nearing retirement – this would have lessened the blow from the global market crash due to COVID-19.

You see, this grandpa is my father. He never consulted a broker and always said tomorrow is another day. He was sadly retrenched during this pandemic and unfortunately, he will not have enough to have a fruitful retirement.

We can always do more. All of us. The consultants, the employers, the administrators, the investment managers, everybody. mCubed cares about everyone out there and pushes so that their retirements will be a success. One thing that I have learnt in my 15 years at mCubed is patience and not panicking. Markets always achieve good returns in the long term. Good returns that are much higher than inflation. Market crashes do get eroded and the future value of money is always going up. Fees are going down and the net effect on retirement is more getting invested.

With these blogs, we hope to share information and stories to assist you in achieving financial freedom when getting to retirement. Start now and don’t put it off. Every day counts.

Joe Marais

mCubed Asset Solutions (Pty) Ltd