MPF

We may take MPF as another example.

Say, if you contribute $1000 each month for 30 years and has an investment return of 5% (after excluding management fee, et cetera), you can get $832,258 when you retire.

Sounds good? But, if you cross out 4% of inflation and are left with 1% return each year, there would only be $419,628 when you retire – simply put, a two-fold difference.

(The arithmetic is slightly complicated; you would need a financial calculator to work out these numbers.)

As soon as you see this amount, you would come to realize MPF could only help the retirement of one kind of people: the fund managers.

PS. We don't actually need much calculation here: If you put $1000 each month for 30 years into MPF, and, if, my goodness, the investment return could cross out the inflation plus management fee (difficult, eh?) we would get $1000 each month for 30 years after we retire.

You call that enough?

Contrary to what Mark Twain said, there are actually four kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, statistics, and financial analysis.