Who does not want to have a secure future? In general, every generation is taught to save their money. But for millennials now, do they know about retirement funds?
As we all know, retirement funds are a preparation to become financially independent in pension time. However, considering the nature and habits of today’s millennials, which tend to be FOMO towards something new, it seems they have put aside important things like retirement funds.
To find out more about this, StratX KG Media conducted desk research and IDI (In-depth Interview) to a number of respondents. From the results of this study, we found various interesting insights related to the preparation of retirement funds by millennials. The series of points below can be used by brands, especially brands from banking, fintech, or others for communication strategies to get closer to their target audience, such as millennials.
Survival, FOMO, dan Well-Prepared
From the results of this study, it turns out that there are three personas that describe millennials regarding their interest in saving.
Survival
They are in the middle class and are married, working to provide for their families and parents. For this millennial persona, they have balanced income and expenses. So, they will save if their needs are met.
The interesting thing about this persona is financial literacy that they do not fully understand. They only struggle to meet their daily needs, in the hope that there is some left over which they can save for later.
FOMO
Being in the middle class and unmarried, they still work only for themselves. That way, they should be able to set aside some of their income to save. However, they tend to focus on fulfilling their own needs and wants.
Although they are more or less aware of financial literacy, their need to save usually aims to buy goods or whatever their desires which has not been achieved in a short time.
Well-prepared
Being in the middle class, both single and married – in this persona, they are more aware of financial literacy. So, they try to set aside some of their income for savings.
They are smart enough to spend their money and usually have two different savings accounts. This they mean to have a place to save that cannot be contested with other needs.
Looking at the three personas above, there is only one person who already understands financial literacy so that they really prepare saving for themselves and their family in the future. Then, what about the other two personas? The other two personas are the interesting things for brands to get to know more about.
Basic Financial Literacy: Saving
The three personas know that one of the basics of financial literacy is saving. However, in fact not all personas have the ability and awareness to do it regularly.
Like the Survival personas, where they have the same amount of income and expenses. This makes them unable to save the same amount of money and time regularly. They only collect the remaining money from the existing expenses.
Then, for those who are FOMO, they can set aside money but not with the aim of saving in long term. They collect the money to buy or get things whatever they want. They are still focused on themselves, so they have not thought about saving, let alone preparing a retirement funds for the future.
In fact, retirement funds can guarantee financially in pension time. Reporting from an article on kompas.com – there are at least five steps can be taken seriously for preparing retirement funds:
- Determining Retirement Period
- Find out and Calculate Needs in Retirement
- Knowing Priority Needs
- Saving on Expenses
- Set aside Income to Investment
Insight For Brands
Brands from the banking sector, fintech, and others need to know some interesting insights that can be used as a basis when building their next communication strategy.
- The first insight is that brands need to know that there are millennials whose abilities are indeed limited. The same amount of income and expenses is difficult to make them save for retirement funds.
- Second, there are millennials who are too focused on fulfilling their own desires so that they put aside saving for retirement funds. In fact, they have a budget to save.
- Third, financial literacy is still foreign to some millennials – so they do not have good financial planning and management.
So, What Brands Can Do?
Seeing and knowing the various interesting insights above, there are many steps that brands can take to accommodate millennial needs to save or prepare retirement funds for the future.
A fundamental point that brands need to consider is being a mentor for millennials. Their low financial literacy become the basis for brands to be present as mentors who have complete guidelines to prepare for their pension time.
However, for this role to be more effective, brands need to conduct in-depth and sharp research into their target audience – in this case, millennials with Survival and FOMO personas. Sharp research results will help brands play the role of good mentors. StratX, which is part of KG Media, has a large audience so that it has the potential to provide useful insights for brands who want to act as mentors for millennials.
Currently, the investment trend is starting to spread up to those millennials. Brands can use investment as a communication package so that they can routinely set aside some of their income to have a retirement funds.
Of course, there are many other things brands can do as an effort to get closer to their target audience. No less important for brands to have is the passion to educate their target audience about financial literacy and retirement funds.
