Retirement age

Frankly speaking, if I have the money I would probably retire tomorrow.

I think most of the wage earners will share my view. Working life is a rigid one, you wake up early, going back late, reaching home with a tired body and exhausted mind, hardly have any time to spend with your family and you started to get sleepy, you then go to bed and wake up the next morning following the same routine again. I like my present job as it is on a 5-day week and therefore not as stressful as there are 2 days off in a week. The worst part is that after getting use to waking up early on working days, even on your rest days also your biological clock will remind you to wake up early. That’s why I always chose to sleep late on weekend so that the next day can enjoy the good feeling of waking up late a bit.

If you’re businessman maybe your schedule will be busier as compared to a wage earner but the satisfaction is higher, you work harder, you earn more. For wage earner, you work harder but your are only getting the same amount of money at the end of the month until your boss give you a pay rise perhaps a year later. Sometime such routine make you wonder what’s the meaning of life but we simply can’t help it as if you stop working, nobody is going to feed you.

The government in its 2012 budget had risen the retirement age of the government servant to 60 and now our retirement age for the public sector is on par with the rest of the Asian countries. Nevertheless, there was no mention on the private sector. Not denying, such move is logical in tandem with the higher life expectancy of the people in the country. Retiring at 55 will be too young for the people with better health conditions as compared to 20 or 30 years ago but the main reason is that with higher life expectancy and early retirement at 55 or 56 years, then money will be a problem.

Civil servants will get their pension until they die but for private sector, the employees will have to make sure that they know how to preserve their retirement fund carefully or else may end up become poor men or women at the old ages, and that will be such a pitiful thing to happen. Imagine when you’re old and your children are all on their own struggling to feed their own families and you the one who raised them up are running short of money to treat your ailing body? That will be a disaster. The EPF had done the study for many years and discovered that most of its members exhausted their EPF funds within 10 years after withdrawal and thus risking the possibility of slipping into poverty at old age. Most of us do not know how to manage money I must say especially if you have a huge sum of it.

So the private sector should also follow suit the government to extend the retirement age to at least 58 if not 60. At the same time, flexibility should also be given to those with sufficient retirement savings which may opt for an early retirement to enjoy life. 


Come on, life is short; why not make it a win-win for all.