How to Save for your retirement

Given the fact you are past 55 yrs, have some savings and EPF tucked away, here are some tips to survive your retirement
1) take up some skills to do part time work – this will offset some of your daily cost
2) put away your EPF for reinvestment via fixed term deposit or other investment portfolio earning at least 3.6% p.a.
3) downsize your living arrangement. If the kids are grown up and are still living with you, either they pay their rent and boarding like tenants. OR better still, sell the family home and live in a 2 bedroom flat. The surplus from the sale should be put away for your medical expenses. Make sure your have public transport nearby. Give up the car. That will save you heaps of money from petrol expenses, maintenance costs, tolls, parking fines and insurance. If you need to go anywhere, better to hire a car for the weekend than to own one. Then you will have no obligation to maintain something that depreciates.
4) Review your living expenses. Cut out stuff that you can do without. Make sure you cover expenses for medicine, housing, electricity, grocery, transport and put the rest away for a rainy day. Cut out the following – festival buying, birthdays, holidays, newspaper (better to go to a community library than to buy a paper or a book), visit internet café rather than subscribe to online service, Astro pay tv and also telephone (get a mobile telephone with prepaid telephone costs – (refill when empty and use sparingly for emergency. You can SMS for free and take calls but be careful of making calls to other states).
5) Learn to be independent to take care of yourself. For eg. Prepare food at home rather than eat outside will save you ringgit for your medicine. For eg. Learn to take care of your clothes – sew up damaged clothes is better than buy a new one. Learn to grow vegetables and herbs in your small patch. You can use empty boxes as garden beds and get good topsoil from nursery. You can do home composting to fertilise your soil. This will reduce your vegies bill – also good for your health seeing that some vegies suppliers used chemicals excessively.
6) Learn to be courageous and try to use generic products for your everyday use – like shampoo, soap, detergent, toilet paper, towels, slippers, t-shirts. Spend on branded goods for skincare, medicine and essentials. The rest of the grocery items can be generic or no-brand.
7) Eat and drink at home. This will save you ringgits immediately.
8) Sell off the stuff from your house if you do not want them. Less clutter around the home is healthier and with the space saved, you can perhaps organise better for your living space.
9) Learn to take care of yourself – health is important whether you are rich or poor. So take time out to exercise and eat properly. Reduce the amount of food taken per meal but increase the meal times so that you eat regularly but with smaller portions.
10) Learn to compare prices and do research before you purchase.