Do you have enough emergency funds?

One expects that most residents will have some emergency funds to cover unexpected expenditure (eg for medical treatment, carers, etc) and also maybe to cover a period that it takes to move payments to a different account (eg of a joint pension). These funds should be available immediately or at most within a very few days.

It seems to be common that one can only get pensions etc paid to an account in the recipient’s name. While it should be a quick job to change this, it took one resident over 9 months to get GEPF (Government Employees Pension Fund) to pay their pension to a different account, and another didn’t start getting their pension for 4 months. It could make life a bit difficult if this was the income that a spouse had to rely on to live!

It may be worthwhile to check with the source of a pension or annuity how long it will take for them to do the transfer and plan the emergency funds accordingly.

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