Careers and Salary Affairs: My job doesn’t pay enough for me to  save for retirement

Career and Job Tips with CV Coach

Guest Writer | In this first instalment of the career guidance column, the Guest Career Coach, who is the host of the column, starts by looking into the culture of saving money for the future, this is an important issue, as it promotes the ethos, or values that had been proven to have helped families in later life, after the breadwinners had retired from work.

With the uncertainty of life, most people have retired from their professions with very little to cushion them in their old age, with nothing to show from their sweat of their working year grinds, some others have even died paupers.

If you look through a list of latest jobs and vacancies in Zimbabwe, it is clear that on average salaries range from $250 going as high as $600.

This is for people in full time work.

High paid professionals working in business, banking and financial sector can earn as much as $2000 per moth and even more.

This leaves others wondering as to why people fail to have some form of savings after having been working for so many years and earning these monies mentioned above.

I am also aware that a lot of Zimbabweans are in part time contracts where earnings and wages are not as good.

To some, the answer had been; I was earning very little at my job, therefore I couldn’t save something for the future.

You do not need to be necessarily holding a top job at a big NGO or being manager at at some office in Harare or Bulawayo, any employee be it a house helper, engineer, salesperson, teacher or nurse should be prepared for the rainy day.  

Economists believe saving is a culture, and that saving a little each month is better than no saving at all. Basically, the minimum amount that one could save; is about 10 percent of his or her earnings- recommend and career advisors.

Since saving is a culture, and putting aside 10 percent of one’s earnings can be a great step in the long run. That for instance, saving $30 dollars from one’s wage of $300 dollars a month translates to around $360 dollars a year. Though, the amount seems little at face value, but when multiplied with let us say 25 to 30 years of working, it translates to something between $9,000 and $10,800 dollars, a large amount, good enough for seed capital in times of redundancy.

A stitch in time saves nine, it is also advisable that were one cannot save the recommended minimum, at least saving something is better than none. Therefore the notion that one fails to save because of had been earning little, shouldn’t be taken as a good reason for not saving.

History has it on good account that some grandmothers in rural areas have managed to save something from selling tomatoes, and onions in the streets, and be able to send to school and pay examination fees for our fathers using such savings.

Wherever there is some form of income, saving is possible.

One speaker once said; “If you think knowledge is expensive, and then try ignorance; and that if you think saving is costly, ignore it and then you will see the impact of not having done so, to be unbearable in later life”.

Aging just like dying is inevitable, and a proper plan for that time, would help those left behind with a foundation to start on. In the next instalments I will be drilling deeper into various career guidance matters. Till next time, I pen off. cv coach