Re-employment helps workers ease into retirement, not meant to build up nest egg
THE first thing that hits me after reading the Tripartite Workgroup on Older Workers' proposals is this: I'm left out of it.
All the changes it recommends in the Strengthening Support for Older Workers report, which the government has accepted, only come into force after I am no longer working.
In particular, the move to raise the re-employment age cap to 70 by 2030. This only starts to kick in on July 1, 2022, when the cap on the re-employment age is lifted to 68.
The current re-employment law says my employer doesn't have to give me a job once I hit 67. Which is in January 2021 - a year and a half before the the re-employment age goes up.
I wonder how many like me will also be excluded from being given the option to work longer.
I shouldn't complain. When I was first offered re-employment in 2016, when I reached the statutory retirement age of 62, the law said I could extend my stay in the company for only three more years - till I'm 65. Then the cap was increased to 67 in 2017 when I turned 63. If the re-employment age cap had stayed at 65, I would have just two more working years - presuming I'm offered re-employment again. With the increase, I could stay for another four years.
Do I need to work longer? The goverment wants older workers to remain employed mainly because we are living longer and still healthy and need to save more money for retirement. Conveniently, we could also provide labour-short employers the workers they want - though many also want to weigh the higher costs involved.
Even after the cut in pay and perks, especially the healthcare benefits, I could still do with the income from re-employment.
Otherwise I would not be able to live the relatively comfortable life I have come to be accustomed to - and would have to make some difficult adjustments to my lifestyle.
Yet there's a bigger reason why I have opted for re-employment despite the lower pay.
I often say if I stop working I'll die faster. It's meant to be a joke but I've seen enough people who declined physically and mentally - some even stopped living - soon after they retired to believe that there's a ring of truth in it. Some studies have actually concluded that people who work longer also live longer than those who don't.
I can see why. After spending over half my life working, it would be very hard to re-adjust to a non-working life - and to re-adjust when you have grown old is even harder.
Of course, this doesn't mean we have to work till we die. But re-employment, which helps older workers build up a nest egg, also offers extra time to phase into retirement more smoothly.
This is not mentioned in the Tripartie Workgroup's report, but its recommendation to promote part-time re-employment is relevant here. This is one sensible way for us to wind down into a non-working life.
Obviously, I have not really planned for retirement earlier. How many of us have? But re-employment is a wake-up call and is, perhaps, one last reminder that I must make plans to retire.
Still you mustn't wait till you are offered re-employment to start preparing for it. It may never come. There are conditions to be met before you are re-hired under the re-employment law. No one is guaranteed of it.
