LIFESTYLE NEWS - Deciding how to invest your retirement fund money is not about completing forms. Instead, it is about making one of the biggest financial decisions of your life.

Karin Muller, the head of Sanlam's Growth Market Solutions, says the latest research results from the Sanlam Benchmark Survey show that a third of all South Africans, when faced with important decisions about their retirement fund savings options, did not make use of professional financial advice, but relied on their own knowledge, that of a colleague, their human resources department or their employer.
"To put this into perspective, an important consideration is that a staggering 88% of people who are financially better off in their retirement received professional financial advice."

This, she says, is clear evidence of how critical it is to ensure that you obtain advice from a professional when you make some of the most important financial decisions of your life.

"Retirement fund members don't understand that retirement planning and providing for retirement should start on day one of their employment or the date of joining their retirement fund.

"The retirement planning decisions people make while they are employed will ultimately determine how comfortably they are able to live during retirement. Unfortunately, most retirement fund members only start considering retirement when they get closer to retirement."
Apart from seeking professional advice, the latest Sanlam Benchmark Survey shows that people who are indeed able to retire comfortably also share a number of other successes:

• They started saving for retirement a few years earlier than the average person
• They saved more each month during their working lives
• They preserved their savings when they changed jobs
• When they retire, they reinvested their lump sums to bolster their retirement income
• They had additional sources of savings, such as other retirement annuities

Muller says it is worrying that just 29% of South Africans are able to maintain their standard of living in retirement. What's more, people who retire now experience longer retirements, but have less money to live on and many are looking after dependants in their retirement.
"The starting point, it seems, is to ensure that you treat your retirement planning as a priority from the very day that you join a company's retirement fund. This means you should obtain professional advice on how to make the most of your investment in the fund and review your planning on a regular basis."

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