I think the buzz word “Retirement” doesn’t really sync in well to potential retirees nowadays as reported in this Straits Times article on ” ‘After retiring, I felt bored’: Why some seniors prefer flexi-work and gig jobs” One of the most common job to consider re-employment is teaching in a MOE school.
All MOE staff who reaches the age of 63 years old, which is also the age where employers today could offer re-employment option to eligible employees, if they meet certain criteria and are medically fit. More retiring MOE teachers are also considering adjunct roles under MOE’s contract-adjunct or flexi-adjunct schemes. In the past few years, about one in five retiring teachers opted for adjunct positions instead of re-employment. Two of my friends who are turning 50 in a few years time are already working as adjunct teachers while pursuing some of their passion projects.
Why is there such a strong urge to continue their employment since they are already eligible to retire?
A lot of people seems to spend all the time thinking about what to do during retirement and look forward to it. But once they are almost at the finishing line, their perception of retirement seems to change.
A quick search on the word “Retirement” online and a few words will pop out like withdrawal, retreat, seclusion, isolation or privacy. These might not be the words that we perceived retirement to be but its very true.
Lets see what Chat GPT came up with on the definition of retirement.
Chat GPT was really spot on this growing trend that retirees choosing to work part time or pursue a second career even when they had reached the statutory age for retirement and accumulated enough financial resources. This is mainly due to the lost of identity when retiring, lack of passion, lack of friends with common hobbies, no community involvement and lastly no sense of purpose might be the top reasons why people do not actually enjoy being fully retired.
Some backstory of my parents and how they are living in their “Retirement” phase.
As I shared previously on my “Lifestory video” on The Financial Coconut, my parents were hustling multiple jobs to make ends meet to support our family of five when we were still young kids. Basically, we were on survival mode most of the time with not much money saved up which was made worst when my dad got retrenched at the age of 50. That is when the financial challenges came tumbling down on us which led to the downgrading of our house and being saddled with debt due to my father’s gambling addiction. That is the pivoting moment where they start to ramp up their savings so that I could used some of it to create a dividend portfolio and we used cash to top up their CPF. Nowadays, my dad is still working part time as a private hire driver and my mum as a part time cashier at a supermarket.
Currently, they receive income from their CPF Life payout in a staggered timeline with my dad withdrawing first at age 65 and my mum later at age 70. On top of that, their dividend portfolio add on to that pot of money which they had not touched since they are currently earning enough from their part time work to support their daily expenses. As the pot of money grew, they started to travel to nearby countries once in a awhile together with us but never really tried travelling on their own. As they are still relatively healthy, I encouraged them to go travel on their own with a tour group because you never know how our mobility or health will deteriorate as we aged. Like for the case of my grandma, age 88 who would love to go overseas with my family but cannot do so due to mobility issues. She enjoyed travelling with us when we brought her to Bali in 2017 which is one of the greatest thing we did for her when she was still mobile during then.
One big reason that my parents don’t travel by themselves is they lack the confidence to travel on their own. I just found out that they had never travelled for their honeymoon as they were really poor back then. They have been on this defensive mode with their money for the past two decades, thus they were pretty reluctant to spend the hard earn money that they saved up. Recently, I managed to convinced them to enjoy the fruits of their labour and its their first couple trip or should I say honeymoon to New Zealand. I’m really proud to say that they are now more driven to go for organized tours in the near future.
I told them about the numerous wakes that I attended these few years since Covid started in 2020 that some of my friend’s parents did not get to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Some of them were in their career for 30 – 40 years and when its time to call it a day, they died within 5 – 10 years during their retirement, some of them died even before they call it a day and most of them died due to illnesses. They were mainly in their 60s which coincides with the CPF Life withdrawal age of 65. Thats why I could understand why some people (including my dad) wants to withdraw it upon first opportunity. They want to enjoy their fruits of labour while they still could as life is unpredictable. You may be feeling fine now but we will not be sure what will happen 3 to 5 years down the road when you retire.
I personally think we shouldn’t call it retirement, we should call it Life 2.0 where you pursue new work, renewed passion, renewed time with your loved ones and contribute meaningfully back to the society.
These will form the most important components towards a meaningful last phase of your life where retirement is being redefined by not retiring at all.
Just a gentle reminder that life is really uncertain, we need to loosen up once in awhile and enjoy life while we still can.
I’m really grateful that I’m currently spending a fair amount of time with them nowadays and seeing them enjoying their life after going through tough financial challenges in the past. The below picture sums it all up on how my parents are enjoying their “Retirement”.
