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How to boost your net income for retirement, according to Hongkongers

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Hong Kong has been notorious for high rent and small living space for decades. In fact, Hong Kong has been ranked the world's least affordable housing market for the ninth consecutive year. It takes an average of 20.9 years without spending a single dollar on anything but their mortgage for a would-be homeowner to buy a place for living.

Meanwhile, despite the implementation of the Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF), the yearly return of the MPF System in 2018 was -9.3%, the worst losses since 2012.

Jobsdb's latest research of 3192 jobseekers in Hong Kong has found that over 80% of Hong Kong employees expressed financial concerns about retirement. Their top three concerns are increased medical expenses while ageing (64%), insufficient government welfare for the elderly (53%) and an inability to afford housing expenses (39%).

Here is how Hongkongers boost their net income for retirement:

1. Accept the reality that retirement without working might not be feasible

While it is not surprising that half of the respondents aged 50 or above feared that they could not find a job for living when they retired, 40% of employees aged 36 or above, who haven't even reached their mid-life, shared the same concern.

2. Ask for a raise or get a new job

A total of 67% would take the initiative to increase their income, and 34% would do so by changing their jobs, especially among Millennials and employees with three to 10 years of work experience.

And 43% aged 26 to 30 and 39% aged 31 to 35 would choose to change their jobs to boost income, while 40% with three to five years of work experience, and 42% with six to 10 years of work experience, would also do so.

Employees who changed jobs in the past 12 months are more confident of their financial situations compared with two years ago.

3. Taking side jobs to make extra money

A total of 22% of the respondents aged 50 or above have taken up part-time or freelance jobs to increase income, the highest among all age groups.

4. Reduce expenses

And 86% of respondents have taken actions to deal with surging living costs. Most of them (82%) made an effort to reduced expenses, especially spending on clothing and accessories (54%), entertainment and leisure activities (51%), and eating out(45%).

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