35 Passion versus pension

People sometimes make light jokes at my passion for a safe pension! The usual choice that become-great books advocate is: Passion over pension. This means, you are asked to follow your passion even at the cost of a regular income, because guaranteeing a pension essentially requires a long-term savings plan, which requires a steady income, which comes from a steady job, and so on.

Of course there are people who have made it good the hard way, after years of struggle and dedication, and we all admire them. Indeed, all the great things in the world have probably been achieved precisely by such driven souls – all the inventions, the great treasures of art and literature, great empires and also, sadly, great atrocities and disasters. These few thousand individuals in history have literally defined what it is to be human. The present series of homilies is obviously not meant for such individuals, who are quite unlikely in any case to be stumbling around the Web searching for stuff to browse. On the other hand, single-minded pursuit can often turn into an unhealthy obsession. What we are discussing here is meant for the remaining great majority, people who have a variety of likes (and dislikes), who have different expectations from their jobs, their hobbies, their pastimes, their leisure and work, and so on. For such of us, working a steady and long life at our jobs, our work organizations, and our careers or (if we are lucky) our professions, literally defines us. We do not get to define the world, unlike the thousand greats of history.

The wake-up fact for us is that there is rarely just one thing that we are meant to be doing in our lives. Interestingly, very few actually stick to the professions they got their education in. I haven’t come across the statistics (if I do, I will incorporate them here), but when I look at all the classmates in my chemistry batch at college, only a handful actually became chemists (professors, manufacturers, inventors, researchers of chemistry). Others turn up in unexpected places – one was finance secretary in the central government at the same time I was the head of the forest service! There are bankers, artists, activists, authors, analysts, managers… very few chemists. You get the drift… so what you did in college need not become your defining qualification, and you will probably end up doing a bit of many things over a lifetime.

When you are not destined for greatness in one particular field, you have the challenge of creating meaning for yourself in whatever you happen to be doing at a given period in your life. Even in a profession, where you would expect to be doing the same thing over a lifetime (thinking of surgeons or lawyers here), circumstances may conspire to give you breaks and changes in between. I was a chemist-turned-forester myself, and expected a lifetime of planting trees (this is meant a bit tongue-in-cheek!), but ended up doing many other things: cutting them, for a start, but also teaching, researching, managing companies, sitting in secretariats… even sitting in a foreign university doing a PhD (about which I will share my experience shortly!).

Instead of sitting and moaning about having to abandon one’s passion, why not get down to whatever is going on in our lives at the moment and applying ourselves to it with passion? Of course this can seem a bit synthetic and even heartless at times, as though passion can be poured out of a bottle, but at least dedication, enthusiasm, commitment to the organization’s goals and to the best interests of our co-workers and clients, can be good substitutes for the so-called passion we have to leave aside.

Here's another thought: there is a favourite ploy of greatness salespersons (self-actuation writers, that is) of posing the question: when you're dead, and find nobody at your funeral, what are you going to regret more: that you spent less time at the office, or at the home? (OK, that's a bit of a caricature, because when you're truly dead, there are obviously other things you're going to be worrying about; but only a little, because the question is ususally posed at your deathbed!). Now I know of very few persons who would be willing to swap a career of jobs outside the home, of business trips and parties, assignments and challenges, for a sit-at-home lifetime. There has to be a balance, of course, but the first thing every young person wants as they grow up, is to be rid of the control of the parents and relatives, and strike out on their own (financial assistance, however, being always welcome if it comes with no strings attached).

So when the question is posed in training programmes and public sessions, which will you choose – your passion or your pension – I usually cause some giggles by emphatically voting for the latter. With a pension secured, I may still be able to follow my real interests after retirement – like writing that masterpiece (which we all thought we would produce once we bought our first word processer!), but without the pension, there would be neither. So the  advice to those wanting to strike out on their own and follow their star, is to think well before giving up the “day job”… or abandoning the spouse with the day job! Which is why our talk about retirement necessarily involves long-term savings and investment plans, growth of savings over long time periods, and other such unexciting things!

(You could say I have a ... passion for pension!)

34 Retiring comfortably, or your life term savings plan

We’ve been talking rather glibly about retiring and having a ball (see Post 29 Retirement as “The Freedom Years”, Post 28 Managing retirement). But this sort of assumes that we’ve managed our savings and investment strategies, during our working life, sensibly. How much do we have to save to achieve this?

33 Finding the rhythm in our affairs

One of the keys to managing our various responsibilities and affairs (and I do mean the mundane type, not the romantic!) is to find a certain rhythm in them – and to maintain it! Let’s take a few examples to illustrate this principle.

Any job, say as a project manager, will call for a certain cycle of events: planning the coming year’s program and budget, submitting the budget and getting sanctions, issuing tenders or notifications, assigning works to agencies, reporting the previous year’s activities, calling mid-term review meetings and reports, preparing our own half-yearly and annual reports, and so on, round and round the revolving cage. Often we see people getting stressed out because they seem to always be lagging behind in this relentless cycle. But we don’t need to fall behind, as most of these activities or actions are pretty much pre-ordained. The smart thing to do is to start preparing for them in advance. For instance, we know very well that there is going to be an annual report of the previous 12 months due by, say February in draft form and by June with final figures (well, government works slowly!). We need to draw up the template right from the first quarter, filling up whatever figures are available, leaving columns for quarters yet to come and the totals for the year. The rest of the text could well be drafted in the course of the year: the background, the planned activities, the descriptive and background material, the heartfelt tributes and acknowledgments, and so on. The final task becomes all that much faster and easier at the end of the year, when we also have to prepare the annual accounts and close and balance the books. We saw a similar need for rhythm in mundane activities like planning the annual tax payments and filing returns in the last post. There is a similar value in having a rhythm in our daily cycle of activities, in balancing between work, rest and recreation.

This is in our working life. Something similar applies to our life on the whole. There is a rhythm, a periodicity, to the whole life cycle, and we need to go with the rhythm rather than work against it. There will be phases when things move fast, and we have to be ready to hop on: job offers, transfers and promotions, challenges, transitions, tensions to deal with. There will be periods when we will be learning, and periods when we will do things practically. There will be periods when nothing much seems to be happening, when life becomes flat and a bit of drudgery, when we will have to grit the teeth and ride through it. We need to pace ourselves accordingly, rather than flail against the course of things. We have to use the energy in our circumstances to gather momentum. There is not much use putting our shoulders against the wheel; a small nudge is enough, however, if we apply it in the same direction it is moving. This is the principle of resonance, where small increments applied in cycle build up the energy beyond expectations.

An institution, or a team, that has this sense of timing and rhythm, where the team members are able to coordinate their efforts, will perform more effectively. There is a palpable sense of  power under control in such environments, almost like the low throbbing of a powerful engine powering a huge ship along. 

32 Paying your income tax

Are taxes always a worrisome task in March every year? Perhaps you are not sure of the total income, you have not updated yourself with the current tax slabs and allowances, you do not have the record of deductions and savings … the list is endless. The way to avoid the end-point hassles is, of course, to start assessing yourself from the beginning. You can start by entering each month’s salary and deductions into a spreadsheet, and in my case this has stabilized as a complete tax calculation application with separate pages for salary, interest incomes, house property, capital gains (which is now empty because I have abandoned shares!), and a master worksheet bringing it all together. I save the newspaper of end-February which usually has the tax proposals, and the issue in end-March which has the finance bill as voted in Parliament (these are of course available on the website of the income-tax department nowadays, but having the paper version saves a little time). You can note down the changes in slabs and rates, deductions, and any other significant stuff (like concessions for senior citizens!), and start computing the tax likability from the start. By the third quarter, I start seriously paying up the anticipated cumulative tax dues in installments. This way, at the end of the year, there’s little calculation to do, and no standing in queues with other harried late stirrers!

Just a caution: make sure to check the calculations by hand (a manual check of the spreadsheet, if you are using one), as sometimes old data and formulas could be left behind and cause unexpected mistakes- like claiming too much deductions or using old slabs or rates of tax!

Why don’t most people do this in practice? One factor, I feel, is the general (and quite understandable) resistance to parting with any of our hard-earned moolah to the government. So the last three months’ salary is often entirely consumed by taxes, since the accounts department usually gets the provisional tax return from you in December. Actually there are also rules about how much of the anticipated tax you need to pay by each quarter (I think about half has to be paid up by the third quarter), called advance tax. If you haven’t kept up with these installments, the income tax authorities may even charge you interest on the quarter-to-quarter shortfalls (even after you’ve paid up the whole amount in March!).

I’m finding a strange problem nowadays because of all the interest income coming from the fixed deposits from the retirement payments. The problem is that the banks deduct some 10 to 13% as TDS (Tax Deducted at Source), but generally won’t give you the correct figures until after the end of the financial year (usually only by the end of June in the next financial year!). In the meantime, you have to pay up the balance 20% of the tax on your interest income, by 31^st March of this financial year. It’s difficult to get the correct figures of income since the banks are so busy toward the end of the year. In practical terms, what I do is to make an approximate estimate of interest accrued by multiplying the principal amounts into the interest rate for the appropriate number of months the deposit has been in force during the 12-month period, and I just pay it up before the year-end (I may have to encash a deposit or two to get the required funds). Incidentally, that’s another little ploy I have of keeping things flexible: I split my deposits into manageable amounts. I also have a system of making each deposit for a slightly different amount: say you want five deposit certificates, you make them for respectively 10000, 11000, 12000 and so on; this is a way of numbering them serially without assigning numbers. This avoids confusion about how many deposits are still there and how many have been closed, and also keeps the bank accountants from terminal despair!

Should you file income tax returns even if you are below the taxable limits? I personally feel you should, because it always helps to have your accounts audited and certified by the tax authorities every year (in case you need a tax dues certificate, for any reason). Secondly, it gives a good training ground for you to build up familiarity with the main rules, the process of preparing and filing the returns, and so on, when there are no high stakes involved. Then when you do start getting into the taxable range, you will not have a stressful learning curve. As the psychologists say, we feel the pain of loosing money more than the joy of getting an equal amount: that’s why if we learn later on that we have missed some exemption or other loophole in the rules, it makes us feel really bad. It’s wise to learn all this when we are not even in the tax net, so that we are prepared for better times when the taxman will come a-calling!

One last suggestion here: how do we find the money to pay our taxes? One sure thing is that if we postpone payments, they become more and more difficult. That’s why the income tax rules require the employer to deduct taxes at source. But as mentioned above, the TDS rates are usually only 10%, whereas you may land up in a higher tax slab toward the later part of the year, and then be forced to pay up your entire salary as taxes during the last two or three months. When I had multiple demands on my salary, I used a method that helped me budget my money without too much pain. I made columns for these different ‘heads’ of payment in my chequebook (there's usually a few ruled pages for entering transaction details stitched into each chequebook), such as school fees, loan repayments, household, savings, selfish pursuits, and of course taxes, and so on, and split up each month’s salary income  among these heads. Money withdrawals or cheques issued were also entered under the appropriate heads, and balance available also calculated head-wise. Of course sometimes one or the other head would go into the red (since sudden demands always arise), and then one has to make larger ‘appropriations’ for those heads in the next month’s salary. You will notice that this works for those getting regular salary; it beats me how business people manage their personal expenses, and increases my admiration for them!  

As a measure of abundant disclosure, let me say I have just paid up large sums as advance tax after closing a couple of my fixed deposits! 

31 Micro-managing your staff

I had a discussion the other day with a management expert who lectures in American institutes and claims to be advising the new Modi government (in India) on good practices. One of the things he was talking about was that as a tax-payer, he had the right to know where the government  bureaucrats who were being paid through his taxes (the secretaries in the central ministries, no less) were at any moment. He has, accordingly, advised the government to set up biometric checking in and monitoring facilities in the ministries.

I had to hide a smile. I did tell him, though, that I also had started off in my own career in the forest service with this sort of conviction. I took the daily attendance register very seriously, and got it to my table precisely fifteen minutes after opening time and checked off the late comers, and forced them to apply for casual leave (if they turned up) and threatened them with disciplinary action if their late arrival was chronic. And so on…

You can guess that much of my time and energy was consumed pursuing attendance. Similar close supervision was extended to other parts of the organization. After some period experimenting, and once I got into the saddle, so to speak, it transpired that there were so many things to do, and so many people and agencies to maneuver through and around, that it dawned on me that working this system entailed much more that putting in hours. I graduated to a different approach, where I tended to leave a long and lax rope, insisting mainly on work output and quality rather than hours and punctuality. The fact is that working to rule is simply not going to get results. Let me try to pick out the weak links in my friend’s argument. 

Firstly, the fact that we pay taxes counts for very little. If we actually strike a balance in our accounts, we will realize that a great many things are actually being subsidized in our daily lives. Our taxes are only a tiny part of it. In any case, my taxes (after all, even civil servants pay taxes!) will entitle me to a very miniscule part of our secretary’s time. Just because we pay taxes, that doesn’t mean that the secretary has a billion supervisors.

Secondly, it’s poor management practice to harp on these minor things. It is easy to hold the bureaucrat to account for his attendance, but it will cramp his functioning. Often, the bureaucrat has to be absent from the office part of the day, so that the normal work of the staff can be taken forward. If the boss is sitting around all the time, they will be sure to keep calling the office staff and getting in the way. Too much interference with the office doesn’t allow the work to go forward, and too much control on the bureaucrat also is likely to be similarly counter-productive.

Next, the secretary’s job doesn’t mean constant availability. In fact, no private company will keep their senior executives available all the time to the public. It will hamstring the civil servant from doing his job in a free and fair manner. Even the political boss has to be insulated to a certain extent, and in fact we need institutions and procedures which will take the onus of decisions off the chief executive’s back in the interests of his or her health and sustainability. If everything is short-circuited to his table, there will surely be a burn-out or physical collapse.

Finally, the actual work of public administration calls for ceaseless activity outside of office hours and beyond the call of the written codes and procedures. Work-to-rule simply does not work. Ordinary people rise to the demands of situations and deliver to the best of their abilities in challenging situations. They even put their lives at risk in certain circumstances. This sort of work ethics is fostered, not by nit-picking, but by developing an ‘esprit-de-corps’, a sense of being part of a special community (uniforms and dress codes are a part of this), of mutual regard and unquestioned loyalty. Nobody should ever think that they have single-handedly achieved anything (except maybe poets!), and the simplest achievement still demands the assistance, support and who knows what else from a long chain of persons and agents.

There are a couple of other facets to this problem of extracting work. One is the inevitable 20:80 “rule” (see post 11), which implies that a most of the work is going to be carried forward by a minority of the staff and resources in any organization. Related to that is the “rule” of fives (see post 12), which says that out of every five people, two will be highly effective, two will be uninterested or actively hostile, and there may be one in the middle who may swing either way depending on how you treat him and where he sees his (or her!) advantage.  Issuing memos and scolding will probably push him into the anti-camp. So it is your choice, as leader, to choose where you will expend the maximum energy. I have heard too many stories about (and from!) officers who embarked on a battle royale with individuals they considered bad eggs, to recommend this approach. It saps the leader’s energy, clouds his vision for the larger organization, leaves the hard working ones feeling neglected, and generally shrinks the organization’s stature and image. It is a classic example of a lose-lose strategy. Especially in government, where the time given to an individual in any position or organization is limited to a couple of years or so, it would be strategically wise to work on the strengths rather than try to set right the deficiencies. Let the last percentage points go!

I am so glad I retired before this biometric monitoring became main-stream. I let my staff also manage their schedules, as long as it did not hinder the work or the requirements of the public. I had no problem all the years I was head of institutions… and I like to think that their time also was made pleasant by the absence of clock-watching and nit-picking on my part. So my suggestion to the advisors would be to focus on the work, the procedures, and the output, and leave the details of attendance and discipline to the internal organization. 

30 Try not to burn your boats before you find your bridges

Ok, that may be too much of a mixed metaphor… but you get the underlying idea. In fact, it would be better not to burn your boats ever… even after you’ve crossed the river (which was the original proverb), because not only may you want to return that way sometime in the future (see what happened to Alexander and his men on their retreat!), but someone else may need to use them in the meantime.

Dropping the metaphor, what I am trying to say is that it is always better to keep some options open, even if you are pretty sure that you’ll never consider them ever. When I left my M.Sc. course in the last semester for the forest service, I was pretty sure that I would never consider taking up chemistry again or coming back to the institute. Fortunately for me, my father made a simple suggestion that I leave a note with the institute explaining that I was leaving for the service, and requesting them to consider allowing me to complete the course at some future date. As we all know, registration is kept alive for a certain number of years, and there is usually the option of resuming a course within the permissible time span. After my training period was over (that’s some three years!), I did go back and finish my last semester… and all on the strength of the little note I had submitted, which had been kept on my file in the department with the Head’s noting that I might be given a chance to complete the course when and if I approached them in the future. That M.Sc. didn’t lead to a career in chemistry, but I did manage to write a nice paper that integrated forestry science with the chemistry of natural products, and more importantly, provided a basic qualification for registering for other courses of study like the Ph.D. in the United Kingdom on a Commonwealth Scholarship. So this is a direct example of leaving your boat tied up on the bank after you’ve used it (as is the accepted etiquette, incidentally!).

Another context in which this adage is very important is in quitting places and relationships. It is always better to split up amicably, whatever your immediate inner feelings. Since nobody is really going to care about your opinion of them (do you take what others think about you seriously… especially your parents? I thought not), no good is going to come of telling them what you think of them before leaving. Don’t get fooled by the “exit interview” into disclosing your real feelings (which may not be all that palatable)… on the contrary, give a few compliments and say how valuable the association has been and how you will cherish the memories. If you do leave in acrimony, the news is sure to get around and you may be type-cast as a difficult character best avoided by future prospective employers. The crucial thing to understand here is that you are not going to make the other person feel remorseful by listing all the things they have done wrong. Any damage will be to your own image, and future prospects. Who knows, the person you imagine to be your enemy now may well turn out to be a well-wisher in the long run! This especially applies to parents and parental figures in general!

One last illustration of this curious phenomenon of things turning out differently in the long run: often the persons with whom you used to have the worst fights turn out to be the persons who remember you in later years! The old bosses who hated your guts all those decades ago (I’m sorry, that’s how much time I have spent in this business of managing life!) form a band of friendly old geezers in their sunset years. All they remember is that you were somehow closely engaged with them, a part of their life experience, and the specifics of your quarrels are often forgotten or overlooked. After all, how many people actually exist in this world who know you or knew you through all those formative years?  A handful, if I am not mistaken. I guess old married couples (at least in my generation) stick together on the same principle… much to the mystification of the youngsters!

29 Retirement as “The Freedom Years”

While we’re on the topic of retirement, there’s a cute book on “The Freedom Years” by Michael Shea (find it on Google Books) that gives a whole lot of detailed stuff about what to do after retirement, and most significantly, how to prepare for it. I call it a “cute” book (a rather unscholarly term!) on account of the decidedly cute, rotund Wodehousian character on the cover clicking his heels in the air, and in the cartoons by Frank Dickens throughout the book. It’s cute also because the author uses a free, conversational, friendly style that considerably reduces the foreboding effect of the subject.

The book argues that there is no law that requires everyone to retire at a particular age like sixty or sixty-five, and especially to settle for a life of inactivity even if one does retire formally. The health of seniors is much better than in previous generations, and we will have to manage our life after retirement just as we did our working lives, as it could stretch to decades with good health and energy. The author calls these the “freedom years”, as there are now few obligations or deadlines, and he advises us to take advantage of this, not by giving up and becoming a couch potato, but by using the time and opportunities to do the things we really love and could not devote time to all these busy years. He also terms this the “trailblazer generation”, as it is the first to enjoy such good prospects into old age, with all the developments in medical treatments and better health and facilities for fulfillment.

I like especially Chapter Four on “Switchover Tactics”, which stresses the importance of maintaining some structure in our daily regimen after retirement, and has a list of doable suggestions. I like the one on taking up favorite hobbies, joining courses full-time to explore subjects that had to be kept on the back-burner (and so on). This last is especially feasible for many of us, and will give us the structure in our daily and weekly program, and keep a worthwhile goal in front of us and finally leave us with a sense of achievement, plus an extra discipline in our intellectual armory that will expand our understanding of things and provide a different frame of reference to relate to. And it’s really important that the mind is kept active and open to new ideas and approaches: this will also reduce our sense of frustration with the way everything is different and how things are going getting beyond us (it was a Roman poet, who commented on how every generation moans about the youth and recollects the days of old with nostalgic fondness; we do it, and the youngsters of today will themselves grow over time into old fogies and complain about their younger generations).

An especially striking thought afforded by the author is the maxim of looking forward, and minimizing the nostalgia for the past. It should be quite obvious to us that the roles of leader, boss, dictator, or sage that we played (because of our grey hairs, age and long decades of experience, and seniority in the profession or organization)  are not going to be with us once we retire. It may be necessary to start again at a much more modest level in a new organization or activity (say, as a student again, or just an extranumerary or “adjunct” person), without feeling the loss of power and prestige. The thing to avoid is the temptation of hovering around the old place, trying to wangle oneself onto committees and stuff, getting in the way of our successors in office, continuing to play politics in the organization. That would be demeaning ourselves and facing an inevitable fall in prestige and goodwill in any case; far better to withdraw ourselves gracefully, and seek out totally different avenues for exercising our abilities and interests. “Our life still remains a journey, but we’re better off looking at it as if we’re entering a new world, with new scenery, options, excitements and challenges.”

The author gives us a timely reminder of the gap between the so-called biological age and the real age. Some people seem to age faster, others look younger than their real age not just due to their genes, but also by the way they have looked after their bodies (and minds!), their weight and bearing, mannerisms and level of activeness, and so on. In this context, I feel that some people just decide to start acting old: not getting up and walking around briskly, starting to expect others to fetch and carry, and exhibiting what my long-suffering wife calls a “learned helplessness”. These are mannerisms that are self-fulfilling: if we start acting as though we can’t remember things, we will develop a bad memory that much faster, and the same applies to not getting up off the couch, or taking the dog out, or walking to the store, and so on…


The Freedom Years by Michael Shea was published in 2006 by Capstone Publishing (a Wiley company), England, and reprinted 2007 by Wiley India, New Delhi. ISBN 978-81-265-1389-6 (paperback). (Find it on Google Books)

28 Managing retirement

I’m getting back to this blog after a hiatus of two years, during which time I’ve retired and returned from Delhi to my home and family in Bangalore. So I guess the first thing is to share the retirement experience!

First of all, I absolutely do NOT miss the job at the ministry in Delhi, and all the meetings and hustle and bustle and dealing with irritable and irritating people! I do not know whether this is a special feature of government jobs, but very few persons in similar circumstances have expressed any regret or longing for he old days after retiring. This has been a very pleasant experience, because the feelings of regret or nostalgia for the past seemed to have been a common thing in my father’s generation (I may be mistaken!).

One difference in the situation of persons retiring now may be that there are just so many more things to do, thanks to modern technology and the communications and information revolutions. There are more channels to watch, more web sites to browse, and many of my colleagues and contemporaries have taken to Facebook and such things with gusto. My generation has probably been the luckiest in human history (born in the 1950’s, we would be just post- the baby boomers, I guess): this is the generation that grew up in many countries at the beginning of the brave new era of self-determination and democracy (some countries like South Africa had to weight a while longer), a faith in ideals and in the promise of technology, and many new institutions and initiatives to take part in. In India, the middle class soared, with limitless possibilities through new institutes for specialized higher education and development  of science and technology; the performing arts, commerce and so on. This generation went all over the world,  and laid the foundation of the diaspora in the technological frontiers of the world, like Silicon Valley. The social scientists and intellectuals had not yet cast gloom on the party by their predictions of doom and mayhem, the shadow of religious fundamentalism had not fallen, rationalism and the scientific approach still held out promise and had not been eroded by the doubts of relativism and post-modernism.

Coming back to the post-retirement phase, a friend had offered the view that you can do anything you wish after retirement:  you can relax, or travel anywhere at your sweet will and fancy, you can read, write, take up courses, engage in voluntary effort, join clubs and societies, and almost anything else. All this, of course, assuming that you have prepared yourself and the family for the decrease in income and the withdrawal of support from the office or company. 

One way of doing this is obviously to plan your savings strategy right from the start of the career; some people say that you need to save only 15% of your income during your working years, but I am not sure it is enough; better to save the very maximum you can spare, so that compound interest rapidly builds up the reserves and soon makes up through interest for the inevitable halving of the pension or other official retirement income. The human tendency is to discount the future (termed myopia or short-sightedness in anticipation of the future);  so extra effort is needed to pay attention to distant future needs.

The other issue is, of course, to do with what is called life cycle planning, since one is not sure how long one is going to be alive; if one has a general pessimism about the life span, saving for eternity may not have much appeal. The only sensible approach, I feel, is to assume that you’re going to have a pretty long life (an eternal life, in fact); there is no use regretting vainly in the sunset years that you’d put by more. The problem here is, of course, that you may have to carry the accumulated savings to your last day, since you need the regular interest to see you through without seriously troubling your descendants. The corollary is that you will have to leave the accumulated capital to them, which is good in many ways, as it reduces your own temptation to splurge wildly and spoil your health, and it makes the heirs a bit kindlier and indulgent if they can look forward to a reward for putting up with your terminal foibles and troubles.

Retirement gives an opportunity to do all those things you never had time for: so enough of the excuses, get up and get going. A friend gave a novel way of looking at it: he calculated the number of days required for each activity, say personal health and hygiene, entertainment, managing the finances, drawing up income tax returns, attending to family get-togethers and social events, hobbies, and so on, and came to the conclusion that here would be no time to sit and brood! Of course, one thing to avoid is getting too closely involved in household matters and the personal lives of your family, especially the next generation; best to keep a wary distance and proffer advice only when asked.

So that’s the thing to do after retirement, of course always keeping in view that there’s going to be a long way ahead. Retirement is a start of a new journey, not the end of everything. As far as the erstwhile job and all its glories, let us comfort ourselves with the gratitude for having had it as long as we did, rather than pine for its loss; what’s more, all those who came after us are also going to be retiring soon, and within a few years the people we knew in our working lives would all be in the same boat with us, so the pain of comparing our lot with others will diminish and disappear.

(As a token of abundant personal disclosure, I have to add that I am improving my initial retirement years  by taking up reading and writing, which I could not develop systematically during the busy years on the job. Going to an institute solves the problem of being all dressed up with nowhere to go; I anticipate the need to travel to a work spot outside the home will diminish over time).