Retirement
Most people in Trinidad and Tobago know they should have a will, an emergency fund, and a retirement plan. Somehow retirement planning is the one that keeps losing to whatever feels more urgent that week, the car repair, the school fees, the thing that's actually due tomorrow. It's rarely a decision not to plan. It's just a decision that keeps getting postponed until it isn't a decision anymore.
One number is worth sitting with. Trinidad and Tobago's own National Financial Literacy Survey found that 68 percent of retirees have no occupational or personal pension to fall back on, and that one in three people over 60 are still working. For a good number of them, work continued simply because retirement never arrived with enough saved behind it to stop. That's the typical experience for people retiring in Trinidad and Tobago today.
If you're in your 40s or 50s and haven't built much beyond what you're currently earning, the honest starting point is finding out clearly where you stand, not guessing. That means adding up what any pension, workplace savings plan, or personal investments will realistically pay, and comparing that total against what your household truly costs to run today.
From there, a few moves matter more than others at this stage. If your employer offers any kind of matching contribution, whether toward a pension plan or a group savings scheme, make sure you're contributing enough to capture all of it, unclaimed matching is money you've already earned and left behind. Consider whether working a few years longer, even in a reduced or advisory capacity, is realistic for your field, since extra working years do double duty: more time to save, and fewer years the savings need to stretch across. And be honest about which financial commitments are genuinely fixed and which are assumptions you've never revisited, a planned lump sum for a child's education, for instance, is often more flexible than it first appears once the full retirement picture is on the table.
Time is the one advantage a younger saver has that no later decision can buy back. A current Sagicor Saver Series Endowment to Age 60 quotation, structured for a 31-year-old non-smoker, makes the point plainly.
Monthly premium: $1,400
Total premiums paid over 29 years: $487,200
Guaranteed maturity value at age 60: $956,003
That 29-year runway is exactly the ingredient a later start can't buy back. Structure the same guaranteed benefit for someone beginning fifteen years later, closer to 46, and the insurer has roughly half the time for that money to work. The result is the same regardless of which lever moves: a noticeably higher monthly premium to reach the same guaranteed payout, or a meaningfully smaller payout for the same premium.
If your own starting point is later than you'd like, focus on today's date rather than the one you missed. Every year of delay is a year that specific kind of growth doesn't happen for you. The habit matters more than the amount at first. Automating a contribution, even a modest one, so it happens before you see the money, tends to outperform waiting until there's a larger sum to start with.
There's no financial argument for waiting for a better time to start this conversation. Income will fluctuate, priorities will shift, and there will always be something more immediately pressing than a retirement date decades away. The one variable that only moves in one direction is your age, and the earlier a plan starts, the more room it has to work.
In one sitting, we can work out your real retirement income number, what your household truly spends against it, and exactly where the gap sits, whether that means claiming an unused employer match, starting an endowment like the one above, or confirming you're already further ahead than you think. You leave with a number and a plan built around it.
Book a free consultation at daronjacobsfinancial.com
Daron Jacobs, RFC, FSCP
Senior Financial Advisor
Sagicor Life Insurance Trinidad and Tobago
1-868-759-8359
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