Tag: retirement

What will retirement look like in ten or fifteen years?

MONDAY, 17 JUNE 2024

The simple truth: I have said what I wanted to say. Now I do what I need to do to ensure I can enjoy a relatively comfortable retirement in a few years.

TUESDAY, 18 JUNE 2024

Now that we’re on the subject: What will retirement look like in ten or fifteen years?

Will a comfortable but not luxurious lower-middle-class life cost more than it does now or less, relatively speaking?

Will proper healthcare be more expensive or cheaper?

How affordable will domestic robots be? Surely they’ll become both cheaper and more useful, as has been the case with personal computers over the past thirty years.

What about food production? It is already possible for inner-city apartment dwellers to grow a wide variety of vegetables in their living rooms, or in a spare room. How essential will independent food production be for survival in the city in 2030, or 2035, or 2026?

How expensive will it be to travel? Self-driving taxi to the train station where you’ll travel by high-speed train to your destination – more expensive than now or more affordable? Would a person in their sixties or seventies even want to travel to other places with the associated risk if they could stay at home and experience any town, city, mountain or beach in the world with virtual technology?

With fruits and vegetables free of chemicals, plenty of exercise, low crime in high-security communities, affordable healthcare, your average Generation Xer might live longer over the next few decades. The big question: How much money would you need to sustain this retirement?

Another thing: How will money work ten years from now? Paper money and coins will likely be phased out. How much will your Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies be worth in 2035? Will it be replaced by digital currencies managed by a Ministry of Finance or Central Bank? How much influence will these institutions have on political opinion – especially opinions critical of the government on foreign policy, crime control, immigration, and vaccines?

Certainly it deserves a proper discussion, but can democracy work in reality, or is democracy like the old saying goes, “Two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner”?

Speaking of wolves and a sheep, what will life on the self-governing island of Taiwan look like in a decade or so? Will America find another lamb to sacrifice for its bloodlust and greed? The Philippines perhaps? South Korea? Japan? How far will China go to make it clear to Imperial America that if Taiwan is going to be a vassal state, it is certainly not going to be one of a crumbling empire in the West?

How physically demanding will retirement be in your sixties or seventies in a decade? Will your body be kept alive artificially with tubes and machines while your mind is on vacation or travelling the world? Of course, the tubes will just keep pumping nutrients into your veins while your credit lasts. The moment your credit reaches zero, your view of the beach, or of the Eiffel Tower, will fade until you hear one final “bleep.”

What about a medical institution that assists you in ending your own life when you reach a certain age? Or when you develop some disease that can be cured, but it will take time and money. Or when your money runs out. How popular will this be for people who cannot afford a comfortable retirement, or for whom something went wrong a few years before they were supposed to retire? How normal will it be ten years from now for doctors and other professionals who work with older people to present it as a “dignified” solution? (Will medical professionals earn a commission for their recommendations?)

Is this going to be a case of people with money living to the ripe old age of 120 or even longer, with freshly printed or developed organs, new teeth, and all sorts of other medical wonders in place of their old parts, and people who by 45 or 50 have failed to achieve financial success, or who haven’t inherited enough from the previous generation, being encouraged to receive state-subsidized euthanasia?

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Another kind of retirement

MONDAY, 25 JULY 2022

Karl Marx’s second eldest daughter, Jenny Laura Marx, and her husband, Paul Lafargue, committed suicide together in 1911. They spent most of their adult lives doing revolutionary work, including translating Karl Marx’s works into French. When she was 66 and her husband 69, they decided they no longer had anything to give to the cause to which they had devoted their lives.

In a letter, Paul Lafargue wrote, among other things, the following by way of explanation: “Healthy in body and mind, I end my life before pitiless old age which has taken from me my pleasures and joys one after another; and which has been stripping me of my physical and mental powers, can paralyse my energy and break my will, making me a burden to myself and to others. For some years I had promised myself not to live beyond 70; and I fixed the exact year for my departure from life. I prepared the method for the execution of our resolution; it was a hypodermic of cyanide acid.”

It’s an unpleasant subject for sure. Old man or woman thinks they are no longer useful, or can no longer make a contribution, so the end is hastened. Would governments and companies that have to make increasingly high pension pay-outs to people living longer and longer be enthusiastic about such an idea? Who knows.

Still I think: Imagine yourself 70 years old. You are single, or a widow or widower. You have no children or grandchildren. You don’t have much of a pension either, and you no longer feel like working.

Then you hear about a program with a name like “Dignified Last Journey”.

Before you enter the program’s facility for the last mile of your journey, a consultant helps you settle your affairs, sell or give away your last possessions, say goodbye to your remaining friends or acquaintances, and so on.

Then your last few days arrive. You eat tasty but healthy food – you don’t want to experience unpleasant consequences in your last days. Convenience is of utmost importance. You also start getting daily doses of morphine. You sleep well, and longer every day. On Day 7, when you get your final injection, you don’t think anymore. You’re in dreamland.

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It might just be a nightmare growing old

MONDAY, 28 MARCH 2022

When I die, the minimum I want to leave behind is no debt; enough money so that my next of kin or spouse doesn’t have to cover the expenses to bury or cremate me; at least NT$2 million/$70,000/€60,000/R1 million to assist my spouse financially in the first year or so after my passing.

After reaching 65 or 70, there are a few ways you can stay alive:

1. Keep working until you die.

2. Hope someone takes care of you until you die.

3. Hope your pension fund keeps paying out until you die.

4. Hope the money the state gives you every month is enough so you don’t starve to death.

5. Hope your savings last until you die.

It makes one think: It’s not necessarily a good thing to grow old.

And even if you have enough money that keeps you going until you die in your eighties or nineties, there are always greedy kids or grandchildren who can cheat you out of your money, or so-called legal guardians who can convince a judge that you are senile and can no longer handle your own finances, and that they have to take over your finances for your own benefit.

Again it hits: Unless you’ve raised really good children, or have a particularly kind and generous family, it might just be a nightmare growing old.

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