Friday 9 March 2018

Early Retirement vs Semi-Retirement

Early Retirement
A study conducted by Melbourne University shows that after working for intense long hours will cause brain damage. For workers age 40 years old and above, the ideal number of working days should be just 3 days per week. This will keep the brain active yet will not over exert oneself due to undue stresses.

Seriously, who does not want to work just 3 days a week? I always believe in there is a price to everything. If you work for 3 days a week, I will think this is considered a form of part time work or sharing of work. Part time work can be considered as a subset of semi-retirement. Be it semi-retirement or early retirement, you need to be financially and psychologically prepared. Before you think about early retirement, you need to envisage what sort of lifestyle you want to live when you are retired. With this in mind, then you can work backwards to decide what is to be done to get you there.

Step 1 - Set your retirement goals. When will you like to retire? At what age, will you like to retire? How long will you be retired for? During your retirement, what sort of monthly income or draw down from savings will be required?

Step 2 - You need to work out your personal balance sheet to understand your personal assets and personal liabilities. You can also make use of CPF retirement calculator or some of the online retirement calculator tools to make some simplify forecast and estimation. You can also determine the differences to make up for in order to achieve your retirement goal.

Step 3 - If there is no gap to fill, congratulations, you are well prepared for retirement. If not, proceed to Step 4.

Step 4 - You may want to increase your time frame for wealth accumulation, delaying your retirement age.

Step 5 - You may want to reduce your post retirement monthly income or draw down amount per month.

Step 6 - Reduce your present monthly expenses to increase your monthly savings.

Step 7 - Increase the rate of return of your investment. Remember higher return comes with higher risk.

Most of the people feels that to retire is to stop all forms of work, they will depend on their passive income to maintain their lifestyle to enjoy the finer things in life. If your definition of early retirement is to lead a more prudent lifestyle, reducing your expenses which is more practical and sustainable.

Semi-Retirement
Most of us in their mid-life will strive to have work life balance to have more quality time with the family. I am sure you too will like to have early retirement. The age group between 40 - 50 years old will be commanding the highest income level during their working lifetime. However, this is the age group where their family expenses will be  highest as well due to children education, ageing parents and home mortgages.

If you will like to maintain a certain level of lifestyle and your savings cannot last for the entire duration, you can consider another form of retirement. You can find a part time job to keep yourself active while maintaining your lifestyle.

Many Singaporeans are over dependent on their CPF as the main source of retirement fund. However, you can only draw down after an age of 65 years old. If you wish to retire before 65 years old, then you need to have other source of income.

For early retirement and semi-retirement, the expense will be at a similar level compared to your working days. Early retirement is to enjoy the same level of lifestyle, usually people will not reduce their expenses. In the worse case scenario, it will be even higher than before.

In order to retire earlier, you need to do the following:

1) Be very thrifty
2) Invest alot

When it comes to investment, do not have a gambling mentality in order to make money in the shortest time, thinking this will allow you to retire earlier. What if you are wrong? This will set you back in terms of your retirement fund and retirement age.

If you are 40 years old this year and will like to retire at 55 years old, you have 15 years to save and invest to lead the retirement life you desire. If you have already accumulated sufficient CPF, you can consider contributing to your CPF voluntarily to earn a higher interest and reduce your taxes.

3 Tips towards Semi-Retirement
1) Ensure that you have sufficient savings to cater for retired lifestyle. A part time job will have lesser income than your full time job. You can depend on your part time job to save up on your retirement fund.

2) Part time employee may not have health and medical benefit, you need to ensure that you have sufficient health and medical insurances. A drastic medical event may wipe out your retirement fund if you are adequately covered by insurance.

3) Part time income may not be stable and as high as full time employment. Therefore you need to change your spending habits. For example, cook your own meals or eat mixed vegetables rice instead of going to posh restaurants.


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