Every day we publish stories of ordinary people with their financial problems, and experts talk about how to solve them. Today is the last story of this project - about how to save for retirement yourself

Photo: Sergey Bobylev/TASS

The crisis has hit all residents of Russia to one degree or another. We have collected stories of ordinary people with the most common financial problems. You can’t pay your debts, you can’t take out a new loan, you can’t save money for a rainy day - how do people solve these problems and what to do in such situations. During this week, we are publishing one story with expert advice every day. Today, the last story of this project is about how to save for retirement yourself.

Photo: Maria Ionova-Gribina for RBC

Polina, 25 years old, journalist

“Before the New Year, I did not have time to save the funded part of my pension. It’s not that I’m panicking about this, but, on the other hand, I don’t want to be left without money in old age. True, I doubt that the state pension will be worthy.

Now my monthly income is formed according to a rather complex scheme and is about 50 thousand rubles. per month.

I’m sorely short of money, despite the fact that I’m lucky to not live in a rented apartment and I haven’t had time to get loans and don’t intend to. The young man pays for the apartment and household expenses. I sometimes buy groceries, but mostly it’s all there. I also have obligatory expenses that I cannot refuse: 14 thousand rubles. per month it costs 3 thousand rubles to visit an osteopath. for a manicure. You can probably find fault that “osteopath” and “manicure” are not comparable with such obligatory expenses as renting an apartment or paying off a loan, but for me this is really important. It’s not clear what to do to save for your old age.

Objectively, I understand that if you start doing this right now, you can put it off a little bit. But first of all, I want to save up for renovations in the apartment, buy a car and plan a beautiful wedding.”

Dmitry Gerasimenko, consultant of the consulting group "Personal Capital"

“Polina is great, she is already thinking about pension savings. Those who did not manage to leave the ranks of the “silent people” before December 31, 2015, will now have to independently form their pension capital. There are several ways to start creating personal pension savings. One of them is to enter into an agreement with a non-state pension fund (NPF) to open an individual pension program. And on the basis of this agreement, regularly (monthly, quarterly or annually) deposit money into a personal pension account. Another way is to create your own personal capital by regularly investing part of your income. To do this, you will need to develop an investment strategy and draw up an investment portfolio in order to further implement your plans with the help of stock brokers and insurance companies.

Polina is still young, it is better for her to take the second path. But before that, you need to learn how to manage your money. This means regularly keeping records of income and expenses, and then planning your expenses. After all, Polina has many financial goals.

First, I advise you to open a deposit in rubles with the possibility of replenishment and partial withdrawal without loss of interest. This is the basis of Polina's personal reserve fund. Income in the form of salaries, bonuses and bonuses will be transferred to the deposit. And for current consumption, money will be withdrawn only when necessary. This way you will be able to protect your savings from impulsive spending, which is often economically unjustified. Once you learn how to manage your money, you can start investing.

A properly balanced investment portfolio contains the entire range of assets: stock funds, bonds, real estate. In addition, it is recommended to keep 5-7% of your capital in gold (both in physical form and in the form of securities, for example in shares of relevant exchange-traded funds). And the last piece of advice is to always remember that long-term investing requires patience and self-discipline. Otherwise nothing will work.”

Previously published stories:

Bad apartment: what to do if your family needs a mortgage
Hopeless loan: where to get money to pay off loans
Native million: where to invest savings in rubles
Thousands of dollars: what to use foreign currency savings for
Mad dollar: how to pay for a foreign currency mortgage
Dishonest account: how much will a ruble mortgage cost?

Dear old age: how to save for retirement yourself