PLANNING FOR RETIREMENT THE GOAN WAY! By Arvind Pinto

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PLANNING FOR RETIREMENT THE GOAN WAY! By Arvind Pinto

IN Goa, there is a unique festival called “purumentachem fest” held in the month of May, before the onset of the monsoon. After a nine-day novena in Panjim, Margoa and other towns, a cultural fair ensures, coinciding with the feast of the Ascension of Our Lord. At this festival you will find sellers of dried fish, kokum, spices, onions, pickles and household items. This is the time when Goans stock their larders and kitchens with provisions for the rainy season ahead. For Goans are both thrifty, planning well for the rainy season, especially in the days when communication between the towns and villages was rudimentary.
Again, there is a Goan saying: “purument kor, pavsachem sambal” – make provisions for the monsoons, the time when families stock their storerooms and kitchen with salt coconuts, dried fish and spices that would last throughout the monsoon months.
Similar is another Goan phrase: “paisa vochun, bhavishyachem samball” — save money to secure your future. For the average Goan was thrifty by nature, to ensure that the wealth in the family continues even after their retirement. Thus, while a majority of the older generation lived to advanced years, they planned for their sunset years, and left substantial property for their descendants.
Today, however, Goans like most Indians have changed their old age attitudes. With the age of consumerism, and rising aspiration, has the Goan attitude changed?
For most of the traditional families who lived in villages, the ancestral house was the symbol of their family. Walk down any traditional Goan village, and most of the residents would know the families that lived in the stately houses of the batkar or landlords. Ancestral houses were passed down through the generations and were generally not sold. However, with the Goan inheritance laws where everyone inherited the property, the ownership of these ancestral mansions were in the hands of different families all related to a common ancestor. If you travel to some of the villages, you will find stately mansions overgrown with weeds. This is the result when there are several claimants but little agreement of who will maintain the property.
TRADITIONALLY, Goans love gold. It was a store of value in times of need. This gold was often used as a collateral to borrow from banks, or money lenders. Most elderly Goans would remember 1991, when the gold jewellery pledged with the Banco Nacional Ultramarino branch in Goa put out advertisement asking claimant to redeem the gold that was deposited in their vaults during the Portuguese rule.
Gold loans are very popular in Goa. Many families pledge their gold during emergencies, such as weddings or illness or other such immediate requirements of money.
Goans are fairly conservative when it comes to money. This can be seen by the average preference for bank fixed deposits. It is estimated that 97% of Goans prefer to invest in fixed deposits as against other forms of investment. In 2023-24, the total bank fixed deposits stood at Rs 7,574 crore. Visit any bank and you will find several older Goans lining up to make or renew their term deposits.
Thus, the average Goan prefers keeping money in secure saving instruments such as fixed deposits. This is why today when the interest on term deposits in most banks have reduced due to the reduction in the repo rate, many of the elderly Goans now see a reduction in their monthly earning, while creeping inflation makes them realise that their money does not buy as much as before!
How does one plan for a comfortable retirement? Given the fact that the majority of the population live longer lives today; one would have almost 30 years of living after retirement at 60. The key to a happy post-retirement life is to factor inflation, healthcare, and life style goals. Goans over the years have realised that they need to plan for the future, which often is uncertain. Like the stocking of fish and rice for the rains, Goans adopt a mix of investments and savings to see them through their retirement years.
Goans even today are family-oriented. A younger generation of Goans still support their parents. Even those Goans who work on cruise liners and in the Gulf, religiously send monthly remittances back to their parents, for the renovation of their houses and for living expenses. According to RBI data, in 2025, Goans sent roughly Rs34.8 billion to their families, a rise from the Rs33.6 billion in 2024. Goans who work abroad are regular in sending money home.
While Goans take great pride in their ancestral homes, today’s real estate is another avenue, especially with younger Goans. During the Portuguese era, Goans lived in their villages and commuted to towns to work or to visit government offices. Today, most families have a town house house, while their ancestral village house is their weekend home. Most NRI Goans send money home to buy houses in the city. Today, big time builders are eyeing and looking for real estate opportunities in Goa. Urban and rural village Goa along the coastal belt have become magnets for real estate development, drawing buyers from across the country. Most wealthy business houses from Delhi, Bangalore or Mumbai, have bought houses in Goa, driving real estate prices to unaffordable heights for the local Goans. Real estate prices in Panjim range from Rs10,000 to Rs15,000 per square foot, while in Margao the real estate price varies from Rs11,000 to Rs12,000 per square foot. Goa is on par with India’s 2-tier cities in real estate prices.
While earlier, the investments were concentrated in banks and cooperative credit societies, younger Goans have now taken to investment in the corporate sector, the stock market, and mutual funds. From 2014-15, where there were just 44,000 registered investors on the National Stock Exchange, Goa today has about 2.68 lakh registered investors. Most of these investors are the younger generation employed in jobs where they have money to spare. Among the older generation, and in villages, the main avenues of saving still continue to be the credit societies and banks.
UNFORTUNATELY, many elderly Goans in the quest to invest and make quick money, often fall for chit funds scams, where tricksters offer exorbitant rates of interest. Recently in 2025, the Police cracked down on one such scheme called Ranggeeta Enterprises — where scamsters collected Rs9.3 crore before the scam was busted. Many of these scamsters visit villages where the locals are easily tricked into making investments lured by the temptation of high interest rates being offered. Unfortunately, many of these frauds go unnoticed, until they are busted.
Like the rapid change that you see in Goa, Goans have over the decades changed from their traditional modes of saving. Most Goans have a fairly comfortable lifestyle and their traditional and frugal living provides sufficiently for a rainy day. For like the traditional “purumentachem fest” Goans ensure that they have enough for their sunset years to be happy!