On that Sunday, as I sat in church listening to the priest elaborate on the Gospel for the day, my mind wondered off, too many different things coming to mind. I was anxious, my Prayer Group was the one animating mass that day and I had been picked to say one of the prayers during mass. The apprehension made my stomach unsettled. I love church, but the front row is not my place, I prefer to sit quietly at the back, never to be heard or seen if I could help it. If only I could be left alone to try and absorb what I hear, dance to the very good music and leave quietly, it would for me, be perfect but I divert… I was having anxiety because the prayers session was coming up next and I was not sure that I would do justice to my designated prayer item “Our Country”. As I tried to keep calm, my mind wandered off to a conversation I had just had with one of my friends about studies and exams she had just completed and was awaiting a new semester. I reflected on my life wondering whether studying at my age was a good idea and that is when it hit me!
That the most urgent thing for me was my retirement plan……. hold it…hold it… I am not about to retire …I still have almost 2 decades to go before that dreaded fate befalls me and yes, I still have children in school and several loans to worry about. Not that I am employed, no, no but I know that retirement is not usually dictated by your employer or the government but also by our bodies and mind. At 60 (God willing), I will still be working because I genuinely love working. I however, want to do it because I love it, but not because I need to. I did a quick review of my status on retirement plan, my balance-sheet and almost ran out of church! I could not afford to waste another minute! At this point, I was not sure whether it is the prayer issue or the retirement issue that was scaring me more but either way it felt like I was justified to leave church. I did not leave; I went ahead and did the prayer even though the whole time my mouth felt parched. Simultaneous thoughts about my retirement plan and the current situation in our country resulted into a very queasy stomach.
I had to discuss this issue with my girls’ committee… We all needed to get serious with our retirement plans. We have been in the corporate world; we have seen people who have earned millions of shillings every month go home with nothing and become dependents. We needed to discuss the issue so that we could avoid falling into the same messy hole. You see, these people were not foolish, no…no…definitely not, no one pays you in millions, or hundreds of thousands when you do not add some serious value to their lives. These are some of the sharpest minds we have, strategists and excellent resources in their respective fields of expertise but something happened (life, I guess) along the way and they ended up in this very unenvious fate.
Today, we are all worried about the ongoing riots, our children’s school fees, our economy and country, our health, our image, the health of our aged parents, our loans, that our neighbors are doing better than us…name it. These daily concerns and demands on our time, obscures our sight for the long-term and then one day you wake up and bam! You get a call from HR that they have a letter for you or the doctor tells you that you need to start taking it easy or such thing that tells you that it is time! That is when majority of people suddenly wake up and realize that they neither created nor implemented a plan for this next important part of our lives. By then it is too late of course…..unless…. unless you are that old man who started KFC. But then again, how many old men do you know who have started KFC apart from that one and maybe a few others? What happened to all those other ones, the 99%? If I cannot start that KFC now, what makes me think I will start it when I am above 60?
We agreed that the retirement part of our lives should be fun because we will no longer have small children who will be keeping us awake at night because of a high temperature nor wayward teenagers trying to jump over the wall at night forcing us to sleep with only one eye closed. Ideally, we should have the last one or two young adults, who should by then be looking for a job and making plans to move out of home.
The relationship between retirement and age of one’s children is not a societal expectation in my opinion, it is an economics, financial management and health issue (of course unless there are other extenuating circumstances that cannot be helped like medical issues etc.). Bringing up a child is serious business, it is expensive in terms of all resources, time, money, emotionally, name it, you have to be ready to share it with your offspring…..and they take and take and take without blinking.
Now, if you married a younger woman at 50 or thereabouts and now have a terrible two running around in your life, your case is special, needs more thought… a prayer, may three (and not for the country, this will not be a priority for you). We will have to meet behind the tent after this to see if we can salvage the situation. Unless of course you have a significant balance-sheet (to feel safe, I would recommend of about Kes. 100m in assets) ……even the Kenyan University fees have increased to ranges of Kes. 600,000 per annum, inflation is at an all-time high, the dollar is already at above Kes. 150, the ozone layer is still dwindling, fuel is above Kes. 200 per liter, the ban on deforestation has been raised, our China debt is growing alarmingly… and we still have 16 years to go before our “terrible 2” goes to the university? In the meantime, I would prescribe you to see someone…anyone…it does not matter who, who can help you bring this trend of getting young ones to a halt. It is not recommended for retirement planning.
The girls had a few more concerns to raise about our retirement plan. We agreed the financials are a big part of this plan and we need to start today being more deliberate about the plan, with the same seriousness that we give for the children’s school fees. It does not matter who is the president and who is not, whether employed or currently jobless, whether children go on holiday or not, whether the neighbor buys an X6 or Lexus 570, the growth of the retirement kitty plan is no longer negotiable.
The next concern in order of importance was health, in which state of health do we want to retire in? We want to be active at that age, travel and see the world, so we must be healthy. We must then start working on it now, because health like money is a daily plan.
The next item was where will we live when we retire? Will we live in our current homes, are they appropriate for old age or do we head back to our rural homes? My place is a tea growing area, I am not sure my then older bones will accommodate that cold. We need a better strategy on this.
The next and last concern was with whom we will retire with… this brought endless mirth as we contemplated the various scenarios. What left me breathless – with scare – was the possibility or retiring with the enemy!
We will discuss each of them in detail.
