Becoming a Yesterday person
The date was 24 November 2015, the day David Gibson turned 60. David was financially comfortable despite his wife’s retrenchment in March 2015. He worked for a blue chip company as an IT Senior systems analyst and was happy there, although often his work hours were long. In fact even as he celebrated his birthday on the Saturday- he had to do work that morning. Despite this he and his twin had a lovely birthday party in a game park, just outside Johannesburg, surrounded by family and friends.
Although he had an inkling that the 60th birthday was a milestone, and often people look forward to retirement practically their whole working lives, Dave certainly did not feel he needed to retire. He was an active person with many varied interests. He ran, cycled and brewed beer. He camped and did off road adventures. He was definitely not in the sunset of his life. Retirement had not crossed his mind -although he had cursorily looked at his companies policies, with a request to HR to ask for information. HR had not given him an idea of their definite cut off age. They had simply stated the normal retirement age is 60, and left it at that. Nothing more had come from them. Most companies he knew used the cut-off point of 65 for men and 63 for women. 60 was a plausible time for starting to plan for retirement and David thought he would like 63 years being his final working experience.
It was the following August 2016, that the bombshell was dropped. HR instructed him to retire immediately. His due date the end of August 2016, two weeks away. HR acted like he had been stealing company funds for working, rather than they had failed to behave appropriately. Two weeks later David was effectively without a job. Pension funds told him that they would not be able to pay out before November at the earliest. Recruitment agencies told him he was too old for another job and the wrong racial group in the present employment conditions present in South Africa. A policy called Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) was in place and was forcing companies to get rid of white workers. This policy later expanded to non-South African black people and would spread to other race groups in the future. Later in this book we will look at these situation in the cameos we present. Meanwhile his existing boss in total panic pleaded with his company to allow David to stay on for at least six months to allow them to hire his replacement.
HR agreed with a month to month basis, on the stipulation that David worked for two thirds of his existing salary as a contractor. His first pension payment would be received in December 2016 at the earliest.
What followed next was a nightmare for David. He agreed to work for the reduced income with his very embarrassed boss, informing him that he could work less time. In the October, he went back to HR to find out where his leave pay was for his employment period, as this had not been paid out. The HR informed him they would pay out when the last contract date was due, so he could have leave if he needed it. David felt uneasy and asked at what rate his leave would be paid if he did not take it. Imagine his shock when he was informed they would pay his substantial leave at the reduced contract rate. In essence he was penalised for his age again by being robbed of his rate for his leave pay. He was also told he could not take the leave. At this point, David seriously considered taking the company to the CCMA, but was scared this would make his boss’s position at risk. All around David white people were being retrenched and removed from positions. His friends and wife were reporting the same story that he was being told by the recruitment agencies. Highly qualified engineers, compliance officers and accountants were accepting jobs for 1/3 of their salary. His wife who was four years his junior was amongst their number, despite the fact that she was highly qualified in the full spectrum financial field. Within those next few months more people were retrenched without pity. There was a scramble for work- any work in some cases. Secretaries and bookkeepers were taking jobs of R 4 000 a month as they were desperate to feed their families, an accountant friend accepted an offer of R15 000 a month, from his old company, after earning in excess of R 60 000 five months earlier. Meanwhile a small politically connected South African black elite were earning salaries that way exceeded what their white counterparts had been earning, job hopping from offer to offer in the employment market as companies scrabbled for these connected black professionals. The resultant mess would cause the economy to start declining and eventually resulted in a technical recession. Then some good news-in December 2015, David was told that the company was unable to find a replacement and the chief Intelligence officer had agreed to a further 6 month contract. In the January 2016, David left the company for good, after disciplinaries were threatened on the managers for not finding a replacement for him. David felt he could no longer endanger his bosses whom he had great respect for given they too were white males.
Fortunately for David his wife had been a certified Financial Planner for many years. She had maintained the discipline, even though her speciality for the last six years had been compliance. Her discipline ensured David was invested in the correct funds for him to retire with a monthly sum, which enabled him to survive. The family had to reduce living standards dramatically, since the retirement income would be equal to less than two thirds of the income they had enjoyed previously, due to tax and medical scheme costs. They were in effect one of the lucky ones. They could still afford to get little luxuries, although the overseas holidays in five star hotels, and lavish presents for people would be at an end.
It made Gail realise how quickly life changed and she resolved to write a book about it.
Gail is me, so that’s why we decided to write this book – how do you have enough money to retire when forced to. Most of us don’t want to retire anyway. The 63 and 65 cut off comes from an era when people probably would not live much longer than that. However, our lifestyles and medical progress has been made to ensure 60 is the new 40. So if you can’t get re-employed or find another source of income, what do you do?
We’re all looking for Health, Wealth and Happiness aren’t we? And while you’re young, you can always count on the fact that you’ve got time to sort that all out. You can borrow money, work hard, pay off your debts, maintain and healthy lifestyle and make sure you are surrounded by the people you love. All this exacts to Health, Wealth and Happiness. You have time to fix things. However, as your life enters the second half so to speak, time is running out. Companies all over the world start retrenchment programs with the 45 plus employees, because they normally are the most expensive resources. I hear you say they have experience- they certainly do, but many companies do not believe experience matters as a general rule, despite what they say. In part, this is because companies do not believe history is a guide to what will happen in the future. Companies believe the world is changing. Adding weight to the belief is due to most HR functions being run by younger people. After age 40 people take more sick leave and become a higher risk. Those bonuses and above average increases you worked so hard for, now count against you as they can replace with a younger model, for less money and lower the personal risk.
I don’t think so. But you do need to plan.
You can still have Health, Wealth and Happiness and many studies have shown that your older years can be your happiest and most productive. We have age and wisdom on our side, don’t we? So let’s make sure it happens and that retirement (or retrenchment) is manageable.
It may seem a good idea to start with Wealth, because that’s really what everything boils down to in the long run. Good health costs money! A healthy lifestyle, unfortunately, does not come cheap these days. You can scrimp and save and grow your own fresh vegetables for example. But ultimately a good lifestyle, that’s good for your health costs money. Exercise is important. Walking is cheap, but some of us would prefer to do other exercises, join gyms and clubs, for example. But that does cost money. All of us looking into the abyss of old age, know that we cannot take health for granted and few will face their later years without having to cough up for some medical emergency or another, no matter how healthy we decide to live. Some of us just have genes that predispose us to getting things like heart disease and cancer. We could also slip and fall- in the home, or when deciding to take an adventurous hike in the great outdoors. A healthy past time indeed is walking, but anyone can take a tumble – even youngsters. So provision for medical is important and for that you need money, even in countries where there are national health systems.
You need money to live, keep a roof over your head and eat, supply utilities and those little extras. Most of us anticipate having to downscale somewhat; and frankly sometimes that is appealing, until we start to do this task. Smaller homes, smaller gardens and fewer of the responsibilities that go with them, is what a lot of people look forward. But the getting there is problematic and emotionally draining.
It is a fact that you cannot just exist, you need a little bit more money than that. You would like to have treats, doing the things you enjoy, spoiling your family a little bit.
And that’s where the happiness comes in. You need to keep in contact with children and grandchildren and sometimes it feels good to help them out with a little more than just advice and wisdom.
It is another sad fact of life, that for many elderly people, children have found work and lives elsewhere. You would like to be able to drop in on them for little get aways, whether it’s travelling to another city, or even another country. Those family ties are important. And you can’t always expect them to come to you. Adult parents and adult children have to both work at the relationship.
So your happiness also depends on not always watching every penny, of not always turning down opportunities to have fun, not always saying you can’t afford to travel, not always watching how much electricity you use to the last watt, or how much water you use to the last drop.
Are you sitting down? Of course you are, you’re no spring chicken anymore. So let us begin.