Everybody has their own list of priorities when it comes to deciding on a career. Salary is the most obvious one because everybody wants to get paid well, but a lot of people are willing to take less money for a career that they find fulfilling because they don’t want to feel as though they’re wasting their days. But one thing that people don’t think about as much as they should do is retirement benefits. Fewer and fewer jobs are offering the same retirement benefits as they used to and it’s harder for younger people to get themselves into a good financial position because wages are lower and the cost of living is higher. That’s why it’s important to think about the retirement benefits that you’re going to get from a job when you’re deciding on a career path.
If you’re earning a lot, you can still pay into a private retirement fund so it doesn’t necessarily matter as much if you don’t get great retirement benefits, however, a lot of people struggle to reach a position where they’re earning enough for a comfortable retirement and so they have to rely on those benefits a lot more. If you’re worried about how you’re going to pay for retirement, these are some of the best careers for you.
Management Positions
Before we look at some of the specific industries that have good retirement benefits, it’s worth noting that higher level positions in management will almost always come with better retirement benefits, no matter what the company is. Even if you’re already heading down a career path and you don’t want to move into another field because it pays well and you enjoy it, you can still get the retirement benefits that you’re looking for by landing management positions at that company. Climbing the ladder is difficult and it will take years of hard work and dedication but as long as you demonstrate that you’re a vital part of the company and let your superiors know that you have ambitions for management, you can move upwards.
Policing
As a general rule, public sector jobs tend to offer better benefits than private sector jobs and policing is one of the best because of the dangerous nature of the job. Regardless of your position within the police force, you will get a good benefits package, however, the further up you move, the better it will be. If you manage to get a job as a police officer, you can then start looking at further education that will help you to land those high level jobs. There are some great courses from places like Wilfrid Laurier Online that will set you apart from the rest of the candidates when you’re going for a promotion. You can take the courses in your own time while you’re working so you don’t have to cover the cost of going back into education full-time. Police officers also tend to retire quite early compared with most other jobs so you’ll be working fewer years and you’ll have financial security once you retire. The benefits are changing and they are being reduced in a lot of cases but at the minute, there are a lot of retired police officers that are collecting 90 percent of their original salary in retirement every year.
Firefighters are in a similar position because it is an equally dangerous job so you’ll be given a good retirement package. It all depends whether you’re willing to work in a dangerous job if it means that you’re going to get a good retirement package at the end of it.
Insurance
The insurance industry is all about giving people benefits so it makes sense that they do the same for their employees. It all depends, of course, on the company that you work for but the majority of insurance providers will offer good benefits to all of their employees. There are also a lot of different job options in the insurance industry so even if you don’t have that many qualifications, you could still look at entry level positions doing admin and see whether there is any way to progress up the ladder. You can also look for jobs working as an underwriter, the person that assesses claims and decides whether the insurance company should pay out. On the other side of the coin, you’ve got the product development team who are tasked with coming up with the policies in the first place.
If you’re interested in insurance but you also like the idea of working in the public sector, you could consider a move into the state regulatory agencies once you’ve got a bit more experience in the industry. They’re the people that ensure insurance companies are doing everything by the book. All of these jobs have good retirement benefits and a lot of them pay a good salary as well.
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