Do you save for your old age.

your government doesn't provide the people with a pension after work? that's odd. i thought every country has this kind of system. for the government employees, there is a pension provided for them after they retire. but that pension also came from their salaries. the government automatically deduct a portion every payday. that becomes the people's pension after they retire. for private employees, there is also a pension provided. its the same system but there are a few differences i think. private employees has to apply to it, the deduction is not automatic. still, even with this system, people still save money for their future. they don't solely rely on the pension. the case is true with my mother. she saves money even if she's expecting a pension after she retires. as for me, i am not yet enrolled with either of the system but i am already saving money. not really for old age, but for my future since i'm still young. although in the future, i also plan to enrol for a pension.

Even when I was still a little child, I'd like to save as much as I can because I find it hard to have so little money. Fortunately, when I had my first job more than a decade ago, I was able to save as much as thirty thousand pesos or a little less than a thousand dollars. However, when I got married and resigned from my first job, things have somewhat changed. With all the soaring prices of commodities, I'm quite alarmed because we are only relying on my monthly income as a financial analyst in a local bank here in the Philippines. We do have a social security here and the premiums are shouldered by the employee and employer; with the share of the employee deducted from our pay. But eventhough we have this, I still would like to have a separate savings for emergencies which we could not prevent. But at the moment, I really can't do this because our budget is too tight that almost all of my pay is being used to pay off our existing obligations. At present, my husband has no stable job and the burden is on my shoulders.

I am becoming more and more of a saver as I grow older. I do have a state pension coming as well as an indiviual retirement account. My plan is to invest a little more in that account every six months so I can have more in the end. I try to use little trick to help myself save even more: saving change, collecting bottle that have deposits on them, paying myself first, shopping at second hand clothing stores etc. It is vital that everyone saves!