How long have you been working as an OFW? When was the last time that you’ve examined your goals personally and for your family? If you’re planning to be one or are just starting out your life abroad, how long do you intend to be away from home? Do you miss your family back home and do you have plans of coming back?
There are so many questions to be asked, but perhaps not enough planning and execution done to realize your goals as an OFW. In this post, we will help you refresh your memory regarding your priorities or hopefully, help you set them now if you haven’t made any yet.
5 Retirement Goals for OFWs
1. A home of your own
Many Filipinos dream of having a house of their own. And why not? Having your own house means no more rent to pay every month, and no more worries about getting displaced when your lease contract expires. Also, if you’re paying attention to the way prices go up and down, you might have noticed that the value of properties rarely take a dip, instead, it just keeps going up. So, if you’re looking for a very practical investment which you can even convert to earn profit, then you better start saving up for your own house and lot.
2. Education for the kids
We Filipinos often live together not only with our immediate family, but also with our extended families. That being the case, there is often shared responsibility among families, and this sometimes means helping send your nieces and nephews to school. As an OFW, much is expected of us by our families, whether we like it or not.
But of course, the resources are not limitless, and we can only help so much, especially if we have our own family and kids to send to school. It’s not an easy thing to fund our kids’ education, but it’s one of the most important things that we need to do as parents to help our children have a good future. If you have the foresight to invest in your children’s education and to see it through until the end, then setting aside enough funds to get them through to college should be one of your priorities as an OFW. Once this has been accomplished, then you can finally consider retiring for good.
3. A good investment portfolio
More than stocking up on your savings, you also need to consider getting yourself some form of investment. Why? Because unlike your savings where your money barely earns, a good investment can grow your funds even as you sleep, or even as you finally decide to retire for good. It’s a good fall back and a means to support your other plans (e.g. starting a business, buying properties and other investments) aside from taking care of your day to day expenses.
4. Business capital and savings funds
When you’ve finally decided to retire, you should also consider how you would be spending the rest of your life back home. If you want to keep yourself busy and financially capable, then putting up a practical business is a good way to go. Besides keeping yourself busy with your business, you can also provide for your personal and even for your family’s needs (if you still want to) even after retirement.
5. Zero debt
And finally, before you even think of retiring, you need to make sure that you are cleared from any existing debt from loans or other payables which you may have incurred in the past, or even way back when you were just starting out with your career abroad. If you’re not careful to settle these things early, these may eventually come back to bite you hard and cause you more troubles than you could ever imagine.
Not a good way to retire, isn’t it? Then heed this piece of advice: take care of your dues as early as you can. The goal is to save and grow your funds more, not to lose it to compounded interest from your debts unaccounted for.