The death of retirement

Fortunately, because I have been an avid saver all my life, my superannuation and other investments are large enough to keep me off the pension and provide enough to enable me to spend a month every year travelling around the world to visit my family in Europe and America. In addition, I spend lots of time with friends at dinner and the theatre, as well as being heavily involved in my local church.

The key issue is that I enjoy working and find it both stimulating and relaxing. Sadly, the fact is that anyone who dislikes work will be very unhappy with working to 70 and beyond, but there is nothing that any government can do to save them from this.

Now for a comment that may cause some angst: We can’t wait until 2035 to raise the Pension and Superannuation age to 70. It should happen by 2025 if we want the rapidly-increasing number of older Australians to have a good and healthy life and want to avoid having our grandchildren pay sharply higher taxes in order to fund our pensions. Let’s agree to retire at 70 or later in order to reduce their tax burden. We are not doing it to help the government.

While we are at it, let us do all we can the turn ageing into a national asset, not a burden. There are many ways we can do this in addition to working longer, such as studying for a mature age university degree and paying the fees. This will help reduce fees for young students.

We can also use the internet to work online from home to improve our personal finances. There are, in fact, many business opportunities that await us all in the Ageing market.

Here’s to a great life as we get a bit greyer.

Indeed, Australia is the greatest place in the world for us to live out our mature years, while seeking to achieve the oldest possible age without ever going into a nursing home.