COMMENT | What type of retiree are you?
COMMENT | Like many academics compelled to teach online over the Covid-19 pandemic, my friend is considering packing it in. But what will he do next? “Travel the world,” he thought. Do what he has always wanted to do.
We know we’re treading closer to the grave each day. The emotional reckoning, though, was kept at bay when we were working, 48 hours, Monday to Friday, as replaceable cogs in the corporate machine.
The average life expectancy of males in Malaysia is 75. For females, it’s 79. Which, if you’re considering retiring, leaves you about 15 to 20 years or more to do what you’ve always wanted, free from the stress of meeting company performance metrics.
When is a good time to retire? When you still love what you do, when you’re still healthy, effective, and productive? I retired four years ago.
With no pressing deadlines, my weekdays and weekends now merge. Only the change in seasons reminds me that another year has come and gone. Meaningful events, and the occasional engagement with close friends, remind me I’m not yet part of history.
“What a man can be, he must be,” psychologist Abraham Maslow once said, alluding to our basic need for self-actualisation, our desire to become what we are capable of becoming. Retirement provides us with that needed time for a reset...
COMMENT | Like many academics compelled to teach online over the Covid-19 pandemic, my friend is considering packing it in. But what will he do next? “Travel the world,” he thought. Do what he has always wanted to do.
We know we’re treading closer to the grave each day. The emotional reckoning, though, was kept at bay when we were working, 48 hours, Monday to Friday, as replaceable cogs in the corporate machine.
The average life expectancy of males in Malaysia is 75. For females, it’s 79. Which, if you’re considering retiring, leaves you about 15 to 20 years or more to do what you’ve always wanted, free from the stress of meeting company performance metrics.
When is a good time to retire? When you still love what you do, when you’re still healthy, effective, and productive? I retired four years ago.
With no pressing deadlines, my weekdays and weekends now merge. Only the change in seasons reminds me that another year has come and gone. Meaningful events, and the occasional engagement with close friends, remind me I’m not yet part of history.
“What a man can be, he must be,” psychologist Abraham Maslow once said, alluding to our basic need for self-actualisation, our desire to become what we are capable of becoming. Retirement provides us with that needed time for a reset.
Friends who have retired or are thinking about it - some because they could afford to, some because they were offered voluntary separation, some because they were miserable at work - generally exude the traits of what I see as the ‘re-firees’, ‘the comfort-zoners’, the ‘searchers’, and the ‘regretters’.
The ‘re-firees’ are the optimists. One foot’s still on the pedal. An inner voice tells them, “You’re free; free at last.” So, they re-fire to acquire new knowledge and experience. They hack out a new path to realise other plans. Not with reckless risk and impulse, but with greater wisdom and sober judgment. They know their limits without giving up on life’s possibilities. They age well.
The ‘comfort-zoners’ choose to retire when they’re still physically fit and mentally sharp. That’s an achievement in itself. They lap up the early pleasures of being freed from the daily commute and the dogged KPIs before settling down to ‘doing nothing’ in particular. They’re comfortable with routine, content with living one day at a time. Every day feels like the weekend.
The ‘searchers’ focus on living out a deeply meaningful retirement. They ponder on leaving a legacy for their family with the time left to achieve what they couldn’t when they were captive to their work. They mull over their mortality when they hear of friends diagnosed with cancer or have passed away. Some delve into spirituality and contemplate: “Is this all there is to retirement? What is the point of all that I have worked for? Why am I here?”
And, the 'regretters'. Their work defines who they are. Their self-talk borders on how to remain relevant and valued. When professional work is all they know, what will they do now with the freed-up time? Some wish they had planned better and set aside more retirement funds. Some wish they had stopped full-time work earlier. If they could turn back time, they would have done things differently. They go through periods of dread as they feel the aches of growing older – and slower.
Each retiree shows a mix of these traits depending on the circumstance. But all face a common imperative – setting aside sufficient funds for when they are put out to pasture for another 20 years or so.
The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) recommends that you’d need to have saved RM228,000 by age 55 to retire in 2019, presumably debt-free with no dependents. Or, at least RM234,000 idling in savings accounts today based on an inflation rate of 2.5 percent.
According to the Household Expenditure Survey Report 2019, the median monthly household expenditure comes to about RM3,600 with variations across states, as well as urban and rural areas. (A household is defined as 3.9 persons living together).
This means the recommended minimum savings of RM234,000 today will last for less than six years. And, this does not factor in the rising costs of living, aged care, and medical contingencies.
Treading through the many websites on life after retirement, one would repeatedly see the importance of saving up from an early age. The question is, how much is sufficient for one to retire ‘comfortably’?
My experience tells me that consumption expenditure actually falls considerably during retirement - when children have become financially independent, aging parents have passed on, mortgages paid off. One becomes a minimalist. Been there, done that.
As always, family ties and close relationships bring more contentment than the relentless chasing after ‘things’. As a doctor friend who’s considering retiring messaged me, “Covid-19 is the best of the best catalyst for us to start living... so sorry for the many who have disappeared from this planet every day. Big time regret is to miss the opportunity to spend precious moments with loved ones.”
ERIC LOO is the founding editor of the academic journal Asia Pacific Media Educator.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
