The retirement shocker they don’t tell you about

Tumiso Chidi, Channel Enablement Specialist at Momentum Savings, is on the verge of retiring. He shares his avoidance dance with reality until his decision on what to do next.

You can call me a money man. I have worked in financial services all my life, and almost always part of my job has been to convince as many people as possible how important it is to save, also for their retirement. I’ve practiced what I’ve preached. In fact, I started saving almost as my career started more than 40 years ago.

My first job was a labourer in an alternator factory. I took it to help my family, and completed my matric part-time. When I started to work for the government, the financial adviser who sold me my first retirement annuity recruited me for the industry where I would spend my life. The prospect of doubling my salary as a newly wed man sounded just too fantastic.

What a ride it has been. Of course, there were ups and downs, but mostly I’ve been blessed with great opportunities. Only once was I so unhappy that I moved on with a salary cut: A fancy investment company put pressure on me to swop my Honda Ballade for a Mercedes Benz, and my Woollies suits for designer outfits, because they wanted my look and not what I know to impress clients. Well, that’s my take on it.

But as I got closer to the dreaded day of my retirement, some truths started hitting me hard. People always tell you to save for retirement, they don’t tell you to plan for what you will do every day in retirement. I felt waves of depression just thinking about it, and realised I don’t want to retire. I look at the grey-haired people in the supermarket and my retired friends and I’m petrified.

My one friend arrived the other day with an unkept beard and shabby clothes. That really upset me – he used to be the epitome of being stylishly dressed.

All your life you’ve been identified by what you do – however much I hate that that is how society works. Now my friends, a professor, a doctor, a magistrate, a principal, are just old men and women. Gone are the titles and the power.

I feel a sense of loss, almost as if an umbilical cord has been cut.

Most big companies will help you on this journey when your final workday is in sight. But why do they call it “offboarding”? To me the term seems equivalent to “redundant”. Fortunately, I have my own people I can discuss my psychological and financial state with, people who know me.

It is also my experience that however much you have been revered in the workplace, when it is time to go, people almost don’t know what to do with you. Retirement is in a way the divorce lawyer that puts distance between what has always been at the very least congenial. It makes your colleagues nervous and management uneasy.

Financially I should be okay, according to my financial adviser. I am thankful that I didn’t DIY my financial planning – an outsider works with facts, not sentiments, and I wouldn’t have picked up my blind spots.

That said, one does doubt yourself – what if I turn not 90 but 110 like my granny, will I always live comfortably, and be able to still leave an inheritance? But I can scale down if I must – live in a much smaller house, for instance, or start buying from a cheaper supermarket.

Let me tell you, when you’re faced with it, there is nothing romantic about retiring. Sitting on the stoep or taking the grandchildren to school? No, thank you. It’s also not as if you can afford to travel the world all the time. I have a friend who bought a camper and is indeed travelling the country, but that is not my life and reality.

My children and friends are trying to convince me that I can now take things easier, I don’t have to get up early and can pursue my studies again. Fortunately, I’m not in the shoes of a close friend who didn’t plan well enough and must put up a stand at every market to try and augment his wife’s income so that they can make ends meet.

My advice is, don’t wait for 65. Have a plan of what to do much sooner than that. That is why I have a new venture – I want to become a financial adviser, those people I’ve given advice to all my life. I want my retirement years to be an active phase of life.

Yes, I am an ordained minister at my church, and I will pursue my religious studies without having to worry about what a corporate has to say about my viewpoints. Yes, I will stay involved with our church project to help uplifting the disadvantaged youth by empowering them with financial and other knowledge.

But I want more – hence the new career.

What excites me about retirement is that I will now be in charge of my life and in full control. I want to reclaim my time and be a free man. I’m going to love the ability to do what I want, when I want to. My destiny is now in my hands.