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).