Pleasures and pains of retirement
Sunday, 5 August 2007
Maswood Alam Khan
LAST Tuesday two of my senior colleagues from two different banks were given 'farewells' at the start of their retired lives. One farewell reception was attended by more than one thousand grievers and the other by only ten of his close colleagues including myself. In her farewell address, my colleague facing a mammoth gathering could not help her emotion to spill over in her misted eyes and my another colleague, while addressing a tiny audience, smiled as he jauntily narrated his 32 years of chequered career.
By retirement we usually mean withdrawal from work, business, etc., because of age. In English language 'to retire' also means 'to go to bed'. After working long hours when we come home late at night our eyes are already half-closed from weariness and we can't wait to retire to enjoy a good-night sleep. Had we not laboured all day long at our workplaces, we would not have enjoyed sleeping like a log all night long. If our working career is construed as a long sunny day abuzz with excitements to sweat blood and buckets, our retirement should conjure up a long moonlit night, redolent of floral fragrance to enjoy sleeps and dreams. But, that's easier said than done!
My mother used to say: "When a mango ripens, it begs gravity for a chance to be fallen on the ground. Similarly, I now beg the Almighty to take me to HIM away from this earth as no more I can bear pains of my old age." If we were allowed to age only and if there were no death we would have been bored of life at one stage and employed servants to kill us. Retirement, sleep and death are all synonymous and constitute gateways towards fulfillment of life. Like sleep and death, retirement at proper time is also a blessing, provided we know how to plan our retirement well in advance.
My retired senior colleague in his farewell address expressed his wish to get admission soon to a religious school where he hopes to relearn Arabic so that he can pronounce impeccably all the words of the language and understand meanings of all the texts written in the holy Quran. We all shouted approvals and my friend sitting next to me immediately vowed to follow suit when he would be retiring after a few years. The Chief Guest of the farewell function, to our surprise, also parroted the same wish. This is what is called 'retirement planning', a planning that will keep you glued to a preoccupation -- a preoccupation that will give you solace, a solace that will help flower a smile on your face the moment you breathe your last to retire from this temporal life.
Solace does not necessarily emanate from money; a religious or charitable preoccupation too without remuneration does not offer solace either -- if we don't possess a cash-cow to bank on. We can easily design a fantastic retirement life free from financial stress, if only we develop a habit to set aside small savings every month to build our 'nest egg' to repose on in our retired life. We must not salt away tonnes of money to construct a gargantuan nest egg that, in order to be guarded, should buy us headache. Financial institutions like banks and investment companies offer a plethora of schemes especially tailored for retirement.
We all know we have to save, but how much? How should we spend our savings and time in our retired life -- spend the rest of life in the ancestor's home at village, vacation abroad, dote on grandchildren, unwind with good novels, magazines and music, devote to religion or charity? It is easy a decision making on how to spend money and how to live the day when you are on the job; but it is difficult to presage how one can defray future expenses and enjoy work-free life in his/her retirement lifestyle.
Spouses face a critical phase at this juncture as they have to remodel or downsize their living standards; a little strain at this crossroads may fray their ties if they are not mutually tuned unselfishly as to their expectations. It has been proven time and again that those who are religious and genealogical well-bonded family persons are less prone to tragedies associated with retirement.
Planning for retirement is an important process in our lives and reaching retirement is a proud achievement. It is crucial you start to plan for retirement as soon as possible. The longer you leave it, the more you will need to contribute towards your monthly savings to achieve a comfortable income in retirement.
The quality of life you want in the future depends on what you contribute in the present. It is important to evaluate your present financial situation and forecast your retirement picture. One may assume 70% to 80% of his/her pre-retirement income sufficient to maintain his/her standard of living. But many of us don't factor into our financial plans the cost of future inflations and additional expenses on account of concomitant increase of medical costs with our growing older as we are loath to admit that our health during retirement will have to slide down making us vulnerable to more and more diseases.
It is our human nature to exchange blows with the truth that tells us that we have aged; instead of priding ourselves on our 'salt and pepper' hairs as a mark of maturity we flaunt ourselves to paper over our ages by dying our hairs jet-black. Such nature of camouflaging our weak points is perhaps a signature of good health. The same way whenever a tragedy or a malady strikes us we reflexively endeavour to forget agonies by bracketing the pains looking elsewhere to search out pleasures; we strive against predicaments by highlighting our pleasures and dim-lighting our pains in our quest for happiness in life.
Nevertheless, the word retirement starts in our mind, when we are yet to retire, a spiral of fantasies: serene days in the village home, performing hajj in Mecca, traveling to North America, buying a brand new car instead of a reconditioned one, finishing the half-constructed house, rearing a milching cow, petting a pedigree dog, nursing a garden at the backyard, re-reading the books read ages back, rediscovering neglected hobbies, taking much needed 'me time' and so on and so forth.
Though we may all dream up ways to indulge ourselves during our golden retirement years, many people at that age are finding a different reality. We think we have enough money for our retirement, but it's really sad when we find that we underestimated what it would take to maintain our lifestyle until the end of life, enchanted as we discover that healthcare costs are rising exponentially and life spanning much longer than estimated, thanks to modernity in the world of medicine.
If you are now retired and blessed with a hefty fund as a yield to your well-designed retirement plan, just relax and unwind, but be careful not to overspend. Before you finally decide to buy a brand new car instead of a reconditioned one, take a pause...close your eyes...and reflect upon the poor. As you are not sure when you are going to retire from your life you are also not certain how long you have to rely on the nest egg -- the only lifeline you are left with. Remember, you may still have a good 25 years ahead of you; so shy away from volatile ventures and extravagant shopping; don't abandon your stocks or other investment schemes where you should invest conservatively. Just imagine how pleasant life would be if people with money would use it the way people who don't have it would use it if they had it!
A retired rickshaw puller could not imagine that he needed to open a long term 'pension scheme' account with a bank when he was young and strong.
He couldn't forecast that he would live much longer than his father and forefathers did; he had to sell the last patch of his cultivable lands for mere survival as he became too weak to pull a rickshaw to buy his breads and too fragile to beg from door to door; his son, too preoccupied with his own family, cannot afford to enquire whether he is fasting or suffering from fever. Death, to this retired rickshaw puller, is an enviable reward and life an unbearable anathema!
If casting votes to elect a parliamentarian is a citizen's constitutional right, shouldn't retirement with a pension of substantial amount be considered more vital a right for the rickshaw puller or an old mother who was abandoned by her children? We levy imports and charge the rich with income and value added taxes to meet our development expenditures. NGOs charge about 30% interest for disbursing micro credits to the landless poor.
Why should we feel shy to levy equitably each and every citizen, including a rickshaw puller, when they are young and strong to build up a fund for a robust 'social security system' akin to those in the west where the government is the guardian to take care of a helpless citizen's needs for food, shelter and medicine? Young workers there in the west have to give away in the form of taxes almost an average of 40% of their income to the government, whereas more than 50% of the liable income earners in our country have not even registered themselves with our revenue authorities.
Political leaders in our country will never dare to net all the citizens with such high rates of taxes; we need a statesman who can be courageous to take such a bold step without fear or favour.
There is a basic difference between a politician and a statesman: a politician thinks about the next election while a statesman thinks about the next generation. May we expect it of the present caretaker government, which is not needed to think about the outcome of the next election, to introduce a full-fledged 'social security system' in our country?
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank
LAST Tuesday two of my senior colleagues from two different banks were given 'farewells' at the start of their retired lives. One farewell reception was attended by more than one thousand grievers and the other by only ten of his close colleagues including myself. In her farewell address, my colleague facing a mammoth gathering could not help her emotion to spill over in her misted eyes and my another colleague, while addressing a tiny audience, smiled as he jauntily narrated his 32 years of chequered career.
By retirement we usually mean withdrawal from work, business, etc., because of age. In English language 'to retire' also means 'to go to bed'. After working long hours when we come home late at night our eyes are already half-closed from weariness and we can't wait to retire to enjoy a good-night sleep. Had we not laboured all day long at our workplaces, we would not have enjoyed sleeping like a log all night long. If our working career is construed as a long sunny day abuzz with excitements to sweat blood and buckets, our retirement should conjure up a long moonlit night, redolent of floral fragrance to enjoy sleeps and dreams. But, that's easier said than done!
My mother used to say: "When a mango ripens, it begs gravity for a chance to be fallen on the ground. Similarly, I now beg the Almighty to take me to HIM away from this earth as no more I can bear pains of my old age." If we were allowed to age only and if there were no death we would have been bored of life at one stage and employed servants to kill us. Retirement, sleep and death are all synonymous and constitute gateways towards fulfillment of life. Like sleep and death, retirement at proper time is also a blessing, provided we know how to plan our retirement well in advance.
My retired senior colleague in his farewell address expressed his wish to get admission soon to a religious school where he hopes to relearn Arabic so that he can pronounce impeccably all the words of the language and understand meanings of all the texts written in the holy Quran. We all shouted approvals and my friend sitting next to me immediately vowed to follow suit when he would be retiring after a few years. The Chief Guest of the farewell function, to our surprise, also parroted the same wish. This is what is called 'retirement planning', a planning that will keep you glued to a preoccupation -- a preoccupation that will give you solace, a solace that will help flower a smile on your face the moment you breathe your last to retire from this temporal life.
Solace does not necessarily emanate from money; a religious or charitable preoccupation too without remuneration does not offer solace either -- if we don't possess a cash-cow to bank on. We can easily design a fantastic retirement life free from financial stress, if only we develop a habit to set aside small savings every month to build our 'nest egg' to repose on in our retired life. We must not salt away tonnes of money to construct a gargantuan nest egg that, in order to be guarded, should buy us headache. Financial institutions like banks and investment companies offer a plethora of schemes especially tailored for retirement.
We all know we have to save, but how much? How should we spend our savings and time in our retired life -- spend the rest of life in the ancestor's home at village, vacation abroad, dote on grandchildren, unwind with good novels, magazines and music, devote to religion or charity? It is easy a decision making on how to spend money and how to live the day when you are on the job; but it is difficult to presage how one can defray future expenses and enjoy work-free life in his/her retirement lifestyle.
Spouses face a critical phase at this juncture as they have to remodel or downsize their living standards; a little strain at this crossroads may fray their ties if they are not mutually tuned unselfishly as to their expectations. It has been proven time and again that those who are religious and genealogical well-bonded family persons are less prone to tragedies associated with retirement.
Planning for retirement is an important process in our lives and reaching retirement is a proud achievement. It is crucial you start to plan for retirement as soon as possible. The longer you leave it, the more you will need to contribute towards your monthly savings to achieve a comfortable income in retirement.
The quality of life you want in the future depends on what you contribute in the present. It is important to evaluate your present financial situation and forecast your retirement picture. One may assume 70% to 80% of his/her pre-retirement income sufficient to maintain his/her standard of living. But many of us don't factor into our financial plans the cost of future inflations and additional expenses on account of concomitant increase of medical costs with our growing older as we are loath to admit that our health during retirement will have to slide down making us vulnerable to more and more diseases.
It is our human nature to exchange blows with the truth that tells us that we have aged; instead of priding ourselves on our 'salt and pepper' hairs as a mark of maturity we flaunt ourselves to paper over our ages by dying our hairs jet-black. Such nature of camouflaging our weak points is perhaps a signature of good health. The same way whenever a tragedy or a malady strikes us we reflexively endeavour to forget agonies by bracketing the pains looking elsewhere to search out pleasures; we strive against predicaments by highlighting our pleasures and dim-lighting our pains in our quest for happiness in life.
Nevertheless, the word retirement starts in our mind, when we are yet to retire, a spiral of fantasies: serene days in the village home, performing hajj in Mecca, traveling to North America, buying a brand new car instead of a reconditioned one, finishing the half-constructed house, rearing a milching cow, petting a pedigree dog, nursing a garden at the backyard, re-reading the books read ages back, rediscovering neglected hobbies, taking much needed 'me time' and so on and so forth.
Though we may all dream up ways to indulge ourselves during our golden retirement years, many people at that age are finding a different reality. We think we have enough money for our retirement, but it's really sad when we find that we underestimated what it would take to maintain our lifestyle until the end of life, enchanted as we discover that healthcare costs are rising exponentially and life spanning much longer than estimated, thanks to modernity in the world of medicine.
If you are now retired and blessed with a hefty fund as a yield to your well-designed retirement plan, just relax and unwind, but be careful not to overspend. Before you finally decide to buy a brand new car instead of a reconditioned one, take a pause...close your eyes...and reflect upon the poor. As you are not sure when you are going to retire from your life you are also not certain how long you have to rely on the nest egg -- the only lifeline you are left with. Remember, you may still have a good 25 years ahead of you; so shy away from volatile ventures and extravagant shopping; don't abandon your stocks or other investment schemes where you should invest conservatively. Just imagine how pleasant life would be if people with money would use it the way people who don't have it would use it if they had it!
A retired rickshaw puller could not imagine that he needed to open a long term 'pension scheme' account with a bank when he was young and strong.
He couldn't forecast that he would live much longer than his father and forefathers did; he had to sell the last patch of his cultivable lands for mere survival as he became too weak to pull a rickshaw to buy his breads and too fragile to beg from door to door; his son, too preoccupied with his own family, cannot afford to enquire whether he is fasting or suffering from fever. Death, to this retired rickshaw puller, is an enviable reward and life an unbearable anathema!
If casting votes to elect a parliamentarian is a citizen's constitutional right, shouldn't retirement with a pension of substantial amount be considered more vital a right for the rickshaw puller or an old mother who was abandoned by her children? We levy imports and charge the rich with income and value added taxes to meet our development expenditures. NGOs charge about 30% interest for disbursing micro credits to the landless poor.
Why should we feel shy to levy equitably each and every citizen, including a rickshaw puller, when they are young and strong to build up a fund for a robust 'social security system' akin to those in the west where the government is the guardian to take care of a helpless citizen's needs for food, shelter and medicine? Young workers there in the west have to give away in the form of taxes almost an average of 40% of their income to the government, whereas more than 50% of the liable income earners in our country have not even registered themselves with our revenue authorities.
Political leaders in our country will never dare to net all the citizens with such high rates of taxes; we need a statesman who can be courageous to take such a bold step without fear or favour.
There is a basic difference between a politician and a statesman: a politician thinks about the next election while a statesman thinks about the next generation. May we expect it of the present caretaker government, which is not needed to think about the outcome of the next election, to introduce a full-fledged 'social security system' in our country?
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank