Joseph Kennedy’s ‘Creating Your Desired Retirement’ Talk (10 Sep)

“The entire talk as a whole gave me some additional insights especially since I am in talks at the moment about future planning”

“Sharing session of the planning strategies”

“Joe was very clear and easy to follow. Good slides too”

“Overview of financial planning”

“Financial plan, review annual

These were some of the comments that participants provided to the question “What did you like best about the workshop, including some of your key learning points?”

The LAS Programmes and Engagement Committee invited former librarian and Certified Financial Planner™ Joseph Kennedy to share his advisory experience with LAS members. Team members were actively involved in putting together the programme to ensure it was an engaging one. The talk was held on Thursday, 10 September 2020 for LAS members and their partners via Zoom with over 20 registered participants.

Joseph emphasised starting with a plan no matter where you might be in your life can provide the advantage for better decision-making.  He shared different ways we can approach retirement planning so as to achieve a comfortable retirement and discussed the tools and resources available for Singaporeans to ensure that their distribution of assets is planned properly. Topics covered included:

  • Retirement /Action Pyramid
  • How much do we need for retirement?
  • Lifestyle now vs Expected Lifestyle then
  • Creating streams of income for the drawdown years
  • Using Time to our advantage
  • Comparisons of investment returns
  • Developing our retirement plan

Questions he posed to the audience for consideration include:

  1. What is the appropriate retirement target for you?
  2. Why do we bother investing?
  3. Are you maximising CPF and Tax relief opportunities?
  4. What tools are available for the distribution of my assets?
  5. What if I don’t plan for my asset distribution?

Besides these, Joseph shared some of the common behaviours that can get in our way of making greater progress, and a list of items to be reviewed regularly using his Retirement Crossword Puzzle.

The session was an engaging session, with participants wanting to know more about topics such as wills, trusts, daily or monthly budgeting, keeping track of expenses, and what types of financial services are out there to help us figure out our finances. One of the topics covered included how to manage risk during retirement.

Looks like there is a demand for Financial Literacy 101 type of workshops! Do look out for other similar workshops curated by the LAS Programmes and Engagement Committee not that there’s been some reprieve on gathers post circuit breaker.

Contributed by:
Ms Zubaidah Mohsen (Chair, Programmes and Engagement Committee)
Stephanie Tan, Jenny Wong and Rajen Munoo
programmes@las.org.sg