Should there be a Retirement Age ?

The art, science, myth and reality of Retirement, should there be a Retirement Age ? This topic wasn’t something new in today’s modern society and economy, it’s not just an issue or problem common to some countries, it’s getting significant and common among different countries and economies around the world.

It was with great interest from this article here – Retire Early, Live Longer from the TodayOnline paper. The topic of Retirement Age was brought up with this headline “I don’t think there should be a retirement age” and retirement is something that all societies/countries/economies need to face today, tomorrow and eventually.

Some countries are facing retirement issues, in the area of support for the elderly and retired whereby the future generation would/may not be able to support the aging population and if we observe carefully, more countries might or have already raised their retirement age, encouraging more people to work longer beyond their retirement age.

Why do we continue working beyond our retirement age ?

– Is it that we fail to plan for our retirement and golden years ?

– Is that we don’t care about our own future ?

– Is that we can or want to depend on others during our retirement years ?

There are probably 2 schools of thoughts on retirement –

~ People who retired early and not doing anything passed on within the next 10 years

~ People who retired early that planned for their retirement years, financially, emotionally and lifestyle, living a longer life.

From the TodayOnline article by Tan Kok Tim

“Japanese Nobel Laureate Dr Leo Esaki once spoke on the relationship between longevity and retirement age. He revealed that the pension funds in many large companies such as AT&T, Boeing, Lockheed, Lucent, and so on, are overfunded as many who retire at the age of 65, usually die within two years of retirement.

Separately, Dr Ephrem Cheng of the University of Alberta did an actuarial study of lifespan versus age at retirement, based on the number of pension cheques sent to Boeing Aerospace retirees. It found that staff who retire at the age of 50 had an average lifespan of 86. Those who retire at the age of 65 live to an average age of just 66.8.”

Therefore, if you want to retire early, have you plan for it, financially, emotionally and what’s the lifestyle that you wanted? If you want to retire early , yet you don’t take any action at all to plan for your retirement , do you blame yourself or you find somebody to blame ?

Or you have grown complacent, lazy and don’t care or can’t be bothered about your future, your retirement ?

Retirement Age is up to YOU, it can be a daunting task if you fail to plan …..