Retirement: “Your 6 children will support you, right?”

by Daniel Yap

ONE of the comments I get about being a soon-to-be father of six is how my kids are such a great retirement plan. “No, no,” I respond. That’s certainly not my retirement plan. The concept of kids contributing to their parents’ upkeep is an established one, but my wife and I have no such expectations, just as my parents have no such expectation of me or my siblings. Times have changed.

The natural question that follows is this: How do we afford to raise them AND still have money for our retirement? To which I say: What is retirement?

National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) Income recently organised a panel on retirement, and some of the panelists felt that “retirement” smacked of old age and endings. Singapore Management University (SMU) Assistant Professor of Finance Aurobindo Ghosh, however, called it having the “financial freedom to do what you like rather than be forced to do what you do”. He emphasised planning – figuring out whether you will have the resources to do what you want to do when you retire.

Sometimes what we want to do comes with costs attached, like opening a cafe or volunteering for non-profit work. Sometimes what we want to do generates income that can offset costs, like opening a successful cafe or working a staff role at a non-profit organisation.

I’ve had a few interesting episodes when someone at a bank tried to recommend investment plans to me. The first question is always “so when do you want to retire?”

My answer usually stumps them. I don’t ever want to retire. I love the work that I do, and if I leave, I will leave to do other work that I love doing. I want to work like this until the day I die.

Don’t take that the wrong way: It doesn’t mean that I’m picky about my work. Rather, I always work in jobs I find meaningful – jobs that I can see and feel that I’m tangibly adding value to society, whether economically through the businesses I’ve started and jobs those businesses have created, or more directly, as I do now by bringing the news to our readers. If someday I could work a manual job with my hands, I could see the joy and the value in that work as well.

I don’t even need to be financially “free”, as in gather up a big financial cushion under me, to do any of this. I simply need to be mentally prepared to change the way I live and what I expect out of life. I see my responsibilities as things that I take on of my own free will, and I work because I believe it is intrinsically valuable and not merely a means to get money with the objective of never having to do it again.

As far as the cost of raising six children goes, we live no-frills and make constant choices not to be swayed by social pressures to spend on everything from tuition to enrichment to gadgets to fancy food.

Perhaps a better word for my financial position is “financially prepared”. I have some savings and some investments from the work I do. I’ve got insurance to cover the basics and protect my family from unusual financial events. I have the means to tide over a short period of unemployment and I know where to go to, be it the G, family, or other organisations, if I need more help. In any case, I’ve made plans for where I can guarantee myself some paid work and built my skills and contacts to help make that happen.

So here’s the thing: If retirement is doing “what you like”, as Dr Ghosh put it, then it can also be achieved by liking what you do. I definitely am enjoying my “retirement”.

 

Featured Image by Sean Chong.

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This is part of a series to get you future ready in collaboration with NTUC Income.

The post Retirement: “Your 6 children will support you, right?” appeared first on The Middle Ground.

- Daniel Yap