When to Retire?
For most people a job is a means of earning money. Correct? No. Wrong. Completely wrong.
For just too many people it is a social need to going to the office to do some work. This is completely true for the male population and partially true for the female population.
Now if you have no hobbies, interests, friends and relatives in your own age group, retirement is a nightmare – financially, physically and of course socially.
If you are a Sachin Tendulkar or a Rahul Dravid – or even lesser mortals like VVS Laxman how do you decide when to call it a day? I do feel Sunil Gavaskar will come as a commentator for 10 more years – say at age 75! Most people do not like to retire and will not retire. This has nothing to do with money.
It has something to do with being sought after, respected, people asking for your autograph. Sure coming as a commentator is nothing compared to coming as a batsman and scoring a century – or taking a 5 wicket haul, but still it is better than reading the newspaper at home, right. People like Kapil Dev, Ajay Jadeja, and Mohinder Amarnath play golf a at a competitive level – but this is not true of say Erapalli Prasana, Bedi, etc. Of course some of the players like S Venkatraghavan turned (profitably) to umpiring and some of the others have turned very very successfully to match fixing.
If you are a player of class and a few world premiers know you, Obama says ‘who is this Tendulkar’ and you realise that all the success in life that you have – including the red Ferarri it is really difficult to give up. So should Sachin give up cricket? Not sure – it makes sense to give up T 20, then ODI and then test cricket, right? Well it may be difficult if you are the hype behind the whole championship and the team which you lead! Should one leave in a blaze of glory? Another stupid question – when you are at the peak, it is impossible to take that call. Like Dravid at the end of the English tour would have looked forward to the Australian tour -right? And whoever thought that VVS Laxman would struggle against an ordinary Australian bowling?
So it is not about money. It is about having hobbies, friends, willing to give up power, satsang, etc. Ratan Tata, Deepak Parekh, Azim Premji, – all those who HAVE a choice have not retired, right? And they all head companies which expect a peon, driver, accountant to hang up their boots at 58.
So Sachin, take your decision, and remember retirement is not about money, right?
shrinivas
Most of the people who work for others want to retire as early as possible.
Stars who are/were in front of the camera would never want to retire.
Self-employed pros may not want to retire till their health permits or till they find some other passion.
Jayant
A very hard-hitting article.
Ashish
Nice article Subra Sir.
On a different note – sometimes its about money. How wbout those Japanese who had to work long enough just to pay off their mortgage after the real estate crash there.
But yes agree – if you are self sufficient retirement has other aspects too.
Sanjay
Shrinivas summed it up succinctly.
But sometimes people who are not in stressful job, who are in 9-to-5 job would like to postpone retirement as much as possible.
wealthucreate
Nice Analogy…. Article should convey the Zist in the form or nice and small story. Its like Nailing in the head.
SAM
Subra,
Nice article. I do identify with ‘going to office meets social needs’ completely! And yes, I do know people who are scared of retirement – they more than enough stashed away – but have no idea what to do with themselves. And neither do their wives! 🙂
Rahul
Lets other people say it, but when it comes from you, it sounds pathetic, selfish and kind of loose. As you have mentioned “People who haven’t touched a cricket bat, shouldn’t tell me what to do”. So I won’t talk cricket, instead I will suggest you about a movie and a quote from that “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”