Recently, I had a discussion with a retired person who is pondering about relocating to their hometown, having worked for their employer for some thirty-five years before retiring. After the person’s retirement, they have remained in the town where they have worked for the employer for over twenty years prior to their retirement. After some six since retirement, the person is now seriously considering relocating back to their hometown.
Even without saying much, I could see the dilemma in the person’s eyes. On the one hand, the working town they are living in now is known to be one of the most expensive cities in the country, which is probably a major reason they are considering relocating. On the other hand, they seem hesitant about relocating for what, it seems to me, is the ‘pressure’ they are likely to face from people who may frequently need financial support from them, after all, these people would think, ‘they had a successful career as a privileged senior employee in their place of work!’
I think there shouldn’t be any need for any dilemma in such a situation. We will, therefore, conclude the Retirement Planner over the next few weeks by consolidating the most important things we have discussed and how they should guide a retiree’s life.
You are the one to protect your interests! The example I often give about taking care of our interests is the safety instructions given on aircrafts in which you are always told to first put on your oxygen mask in the event of depressurization before trying to help anyone else. It doesn’t matter that ‘anyone else’ is your little baby or your elderly parent by your side. This is a wise advisory in the sense that if you don’t put on your mask first and fast, you could pass out before you succeed in helping the other ‘loved’ person. So, helping yourself is what puts you in good stead to help others.
We are often, and rightly too, encouraged to be selfless. And this is really right in many situations. But in many other situations, we need to take care of ourselves first before we can be ‘selfless’ in helping others. We have discussed that people can be particularly vulnerable in retirement for many reasons. Depending on their situation, though by no means necessary, their sources of income and cash flow might be limited in comparison to when they were working; As we age, we tend to get more frail and perhaps unable to physically and mentally exert ourselves to make financial corrections in case of errors as we probably did in our thirties; We are getting ‘less and less African’ in the sense that we do not want to rely on our children to take care of us in our old age (or perhaps the children may not even be interested in helping us!); etc.
For these reasons, we should be unapologetic about ensuring that we take care of ourselves first and then see how else we can help others. In the case of the retiree mentioned earlier, therefore, I told them, in a nutshell, that relocating can be wise for financial reasons. And in so doing they must have the moral strength to only accept to do to others what they can comfortably do and not lose any sleep if they are unable, or simply unwilling, to do what goes against what they consider as their personal interests. I really don’t see anything difficult here. Quite honestly if you have spent thirty-five years in government or the private sector and cannot do this, then something may be wrong somewhere. And if as a retiree you are not willing to live by this simple maxim, you probably should re-read this column all over again!
Calm down! In one of my last positions as an employee, I was asked to deliver a lecture to some new employees on the function of my Department in early April of a particular year. Whilst preparing some notes for the lecture, I had a newspaper for that day and realized that one of the financially strong state governments in the North had published its budget for the year. But on my desk also was what my Department had spent for the first three months of the year. What was striking was that what my Department had already spent in three months of that year was a shade more than four times what that state government had budgeted for the year! Yes, you read that right, what we spent in three months was a little more than four times what a state government had budgeted to spend in the year. (Which, by the way, amongst other things had always pointed to me how there is so much more money in the private sector than the public sector. But this is another issue for another space.)
My point is that many retirees, perhaps including you, had controlled substantial sums in the course of their working and business careers; They have travelled the world; They have met some of the best-trained persons in their industry and the most powerful and richest individuals in the world; They had bought the most expensive watches as gifts for their spouses, etc. Depending on our situation and what we opt to do, we may find ourselves in retirement engaging with people who had never travelled beyond a three-hundred-kilometre radius from their homes. Or persons that have not been as trained, exposed and privileged as us. It can be tricky engaging with such persons unless we take things easy and put them in their perspectives. In retirement, we should strive to make things easy for ourselves by engaging with people more at their level than at ours as long as we do what is right and try to help them improve their thinking and ways only in small increments and without much expectation.
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