Must I retire at 60?

Due to my family background and social upbringing, I always had this idea that people retire at the age of 55. After retirement, they will either relax at home doing gardening or playing with grandchildren or go traveling around the world.

That was the idea I had about retirement even after I met my first insurance agent. The only difference after talking to my insurance agents was that the retirement age had been postponed to 60. That is the official retirement age for most of the companies including governmental organizations today. And yes, you bet, I can fly till the age of 60, provided I clear my medical checks every 6 months.

However, as I gain more exposure through reading and meeting people from various backgrounds, I start to rethink the definition of retirement. Does retirement always occur after a certain age? Or does it occur after certain criteria are met? Please correct me if I am wrong, most retirees are people who have the following characteristics:

- Freedom of time to do whatever they like including continuing with their old hobbies or picking up new ones
- Financial freedom, i.e. all of their financial commitments such as medical care and living expenses have been taken care of, and
- If they work, it is usually just to past time and not for the money


If you examine closely, the above characteristics can be acquired by anyone at any age. A person who is born with a silver spoon in his/her mouth can practically retire since day one. (Alternatively, you can marry a rich husband/wife and reach an agreement that he/she works while you enjoy life. :-) ) Unfortunately, I am not one of them. Like the majority of us, I still have to work for my retirement.

The next question will be: Do most of the people manage to assume the above-mentioned characteristics by the age of 60 – the official retirement age? Some do, some don’t. Those who plan early do. Those who didn’t plan don’t. Why? Because when you don't plan, you are likely to fall into the trap of financial debt. Banks and credit card companies will not hesitate to grant you loans to buy new and bigger houses, cars, club memberships and so on. Before you knew it, you are trapped in the rat race of working for money to pay off your debt. Sounds familiar?

In order to achieve financial freedom, you don’t have to become a millionaire. If your daily expenses after retirement is small, you do not need a huge amount of reserves to last you till the end of days. If you fancy living in a big bungalow, driving big cars and dining in expensive restaurants after retirement, you probably have to work triply hard to save up your financial nest eggs. Obviously, it is up to each individual to set the targets.

But whatever the target is, we need to work on either increase the source of income and/or resizing the target or both. And the retirement age is just a time frame you set for yourself. Your company or the government may have some form of retirement plans in place for you. But is it enough for you to reach your target? Bearing in mind, those plans assume that you stop working at the age of 60. For my case, it’s not enough. So I have to rely on myself now. Furthermore, I have set myself a stricter time frame – by the age of 45. I sure need to work many times harder to achieve my target.

A friend asked me: Why stress yourself? Is there a need to have a target? Are you being ‘kiasu’? I will attempt to answer those questions in my next post. Watch out for it. :-)