‘Without knowing your life plan, it’s difficult to do financial planning’, says retiree – 02/25/2024 – Market

With a career spanning almost 30 years at IBM, Fernando Lima, 77, today has a comfortable financial life, living off income from private retirement and INSS, as well as the income from his financial investments.

He states that he had contact with the concept of financial planning since he was little. Born in the interior of São Paulo, in the city of Casa Branca, Lima says that his father, who was a tailor, died when he was just four years old, which forced his mother, a primary school teacher, to support her two children alone without the help of third parties until they both graduate from higher education.

“I wonder how she managed this, and it was certainly by controlling her expenses and planning her finances well.”

Having graduated in Anglo-American literature from PUC-Campinas, Lima even taught Portuguese and English for a few years after graduating, but soon realized that the career would not be enough to achieve the desired standard of living.

He then went in search of new professional experiences, having worked for a year as an operational flight dispatcher at Varig.

In 1971, when he was 24 years old, the opportunity arose to join the computer multinational IBM, where he stayed until his retirement in 1997. At the technology company, he accumulated experience in a series of areas, such as project development and human resources, including holding positions abroad, in Germany and the United States.

Upon returning from his time abroad, with his wife out of work, the linguist says he was in some trouble, with expenses exceeding his income. Making a spreadsheet to accurately control the budget and reduce expenses was a strategy that contributed to balancing the accounts.

“I cut superfluous expenses, we cut out dinners out, I didn’t drive a car for a few months, I couldn’t spend money on gasoline and I didn’t have money for food.”

Upon retiring from IBM, Lima chose to open his own company, Fatel Limitada, in which he used his almost 30 years of experience at the multinational to develop projects for companies in the most different segments of the economy, such as Sky, a pay TV company. , and the construction company WTorre.

When he chose to retire for good, in mid-2014, Lima says he had a well-established life, living with his wife in the apartment he had bought years before in São Paulo and with his daughter who graduated in business administration from PUC-SP and also working at IBM.

At that moment, he understood that it would be important to have the help of a professional who would help him develop a financial project to live the next years of retirement with peace of mind.

According to Lima, when contacting planner Carlos Castro, from the SuperRico platform, one point that caught his attention was when the specialist asked him about what his life project was.

He then sat down with his wife and outlined the goals ahead, which involved maintaining the standard of living achieved for at least 20 years.

To maintain this standard, conservative investments, such as DI funds in large banks and savings accounts, gave way to investments with an expected higher return, such as stock funds and multimarkets.

The planning outlined by Lima also included safeguards to guarantee the woman’s well-being in the event of her death, such as life insurance and a health plan contracted through the company opened years before.

“If you don’t know what project you want to achieve, it’s very difficult to do financial planning,” says Lima.