For most of us, there are several important financial goals that we want to invest our life savings into achieving. These include buying a house, paying for our children’s education, marriage, and most importantly saving up for a comfortable retirement. With competing financial priorities, it is important to invest your savings into investment instruments which give you high returns. Saving for retirement is one of the key goals to achieve financial security and independence. Here are some investment instruments you can use to plan for your retirement.

#1. Annuity Plans

These plans are as a contract between you and an insurance company in which you make a one time or a series of payments and in return, you obtain regular disbursements beginning either immediately or at some point in the future. Annuity plans aim to provide you with a steady stream of income during your retirement. They offer you coverage against any risk that may arise during your retirement or old age, these include income replacement, inflation and investment risk. Saving for retirement is a critical financial step and annuity plans are one of the most convenient ways to do so. For instance, the Generali Central Immediate Income Annuity Plan offers you a range of benefits, including a fixed annuity for the rest of your life. In case of your unfortunate demise, the purchase price is paid to the nominee and the policy terminates. Under the plan, you have the flexibility to choose a monthly or yearly payout mode. In fact, the policy also offers you an annuity card that ensures convenience in receiving the annuity amount. Under the Generali Central Immediate Income Annuity Plan, you decide your own purchase price. This means that you decide the single premium amount that you wish to invest, for receiving a lifelong annuity.

#2. Unit-linked insurance plans

Unit-linked insurance plans or ULIPs have always stood out as an instrument of investment due to their ability to provide both market linked returns along with security and protection. While we have limited savings and competing financial priorities, ULIPs offer us the dual benefit of generating a corpus for our retirement, while also offering us the security and protection of a life insurance plan. In any ULIP, investors have the option of choosing from four basic funds. These include equity funds (highest risk factor), income/fixed interest/bonds (medium risk), the balanced fund (medium risk) and cash funds (low risk). ULIPs allow you to swiftly switch your investments between these funds, thereby enabling you to take advantage of being invested in the market in the long term as well as being able to take advantage of the volatility of the market.

#3. Mutual Funds

Mutual funds are an investment tool wherein investors who share a mutual financial goal pool in their capital. A fund manager then manages this pool of money and invests it into a variety of investment tools such as ompany stocks, bonds and shares to help generate returns. All mutual funds in India are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Mutual funds can be classified into different categories based on certain characteristics such as asset class, structure, investment objectives, and risk. One of the most commonly used categories to classify mutual funds on the basis of their asset class. These include equity, debt, money market and hybrid funds.

While equity funds comprise of all investments made in stocks of companies, they are also the most in demand by investors as they offer high returns in lesser time. Debt funds, on the other hand, are low risk and fixed income instruments such as government securities. Money market funds on the other hand, enable you to invest in easily accessible cash and cash equivalent securities and offer returns as regular dividends, however, if you are investing for retirement, you will not be investing in such funds as they are usually only for short term investment. The balance of funds you decide to invest into will depend on a range of factors including your income, investment horizon, condition of the market, risk-taking ability, amongst others.

Regardless of the investment instrument you choose to park your savings into, it is critical to regularly review the performance of your investment to ensure it is on track to help you achieve your financial goal of being able to save up for a comfortable retirement.