Post by oldman on Oct 20, 2013 4:40:30 GMT 7
With the flattening of the world and the increase competition for jobs, it is likely that it will get harder and harder to find full time employment beyond the age of 50. By then, we would have spent 25 years working in the profession for which we have been trained. Those of us who are lucky, continue to be employed in the same profession beyond the age of 50. However, as the years go by, it is more likely that many of us would have to consider a career change as we move into our 50's.... given that our bodies will not be that agile and our thinking may not be that quick anymore.
As life expectancy in Singapore is fast approaching 80 years, there is a good 30 years of life left after retirement at 50 years of age. 30 years is a long time... even longer than the 25 years that most of us would have spent working on our occupations.
We need to plan ahead for these 30 years.... otherwise, these still productive years may go to waste. In the past, when life expectancy was much shorter at around 60 years, it is fair to want to tone down after the age of 50 as one can then spend the rest of the time looking back at life.
But now that most of us will have 30 years instead of 10 years, we should actively think ahead as to what we want to do for our retirement. I think the best way of looking at this is to consider this period as our retirement career.
As this may be the longest career period of our lives, it makes sense to even consider this as the pinnacle of our career. In other words, the end in sight is not our traditional career but our retirement career. The reason I differentiate retirement career from traditional career is because we have to recognise that our bodies and minds will have aged by the time we turn 50 and the occupations that we can do during this retirement phase may be very different from the occupation that we did when we were much younger. A retirement career should not be physically challenging as we are unlikely to be as fit as before. Ideally too, a retirement career should fully exploit our experiences in life and should keep us mentally sharp and constantly challenged.
So, instead of the traditional career planning, we may be better asking ourselves what we intend to do when we retire. And then, we work backwards from there... making sure that we acquire along the way, the skills needed for our retirement career.
For me, I always knew that I wanted to retire as an investor. So, I started investing as soon as I joined the work force. I saved money for my investments but made many mistakes as a novice investor. I soon realise that one cannot simply pick up investing by reading books and making trading mistakes. One still needs to have some business experience.
I then left my medical profession to pick up business skills. Little did I know that these business skills took me a much longer time to master. I spent the next 6 years working for a large multinational company, another 3 years working for a small medium enterprise and finally, another 9 years running my own business. Only then did I feel that I had enough business experience to invest successfully for a living.
It is my hope that more people will view retirement as their golden age and plan their retirement career carefully as the pinnacle of our lives may in fact be during these retirement years.
As life expectancy in Singapore is fast approaching 80 years, there is a good 30 years of life left after retirement at 50 years of age. 30 years is a long time... even longer than the 25 years that most of us would have spent working on our occupations.
We need to plan ahead for these 30 years.... otherwise, these still productive years may go to waste. In the past, when life expectancy was much shorter at around 60 years, it is fair to want to tone down after the age of 50 as one can then spend the rest of the time looking back at life.
But now that most of us will have 30 years instead of 10 years, we should actively think ahead as to what we want to do for our retirement. I think the best way of looking at this is to consider this period as our retirement career.
As this may be the longest career period of our lives, it makes sense to even consider this as the pinnacle of our career. In other words, the end in sight is not our traditional career but our retirement career. The reason I differentiate retirement career from traditional career is because we have to recognise that our bodies and minds will have aged by the time we turn 50 and the occupations that we can do during this retirement phase may be very different from the occupation that we did when we were much younger. A retirement career should not be physically challenging as we are unlikely to be as fit as before. Ideally too, a retirement career should fully exploit our experiences in life and should keep us mentally sharp and constantly challenged.
So, instead of the traditional career planning, we may be better asking ourselves what we intend to do when we retire. And then, we work backwards from there... making sure that we acquire along the way, the skills needed for our retirement career.
For me, I always knew that I wanted to retire as an investor. So, I started investing as soon as I joined the work force. I saved money for my investments but made many mistakes as a novice investor. I soon realise that one cannot simply pick up investing by reading books and making trading mistakes. One still needs to have some business experience.
I then left my medical profession to pick up business skills. Little did I know that these business skills took me a much longer time to master. I spent the next 6 years working for a large multinational company, another 3 years working for a small medium enterprise and finally, another 9 years running my own business. Only then did I feel that I had enough business experience to invest successfully for a living.
It is my hope that more people will view retirement as their golden age and plan their retirement career carefully as the pinnacle of our lives may in fact be during these retirement years.