With medical advances, decline in smoking, more physical activity and better eating habits, and other factors that enable people to live longer, the average lucky person in a western country could expect to spend 18-plus years in retirement.
Let you and I work on solutions together: Email me how you are planning for retirement. Share your ideas for all of us to learn from your insights.
Retirement is one of those life's mirages: you know it is there and coming towards you, and yet it surprises you how fast it arrives. Many of us in Diaspora refuse to see the magnitude of it. Even as retirement stares us in the face, we don't plan for it. The Igbos have an adage: not mentioning death by name does not mean a moratorium on dying. "Ma akpoyi onwu aha, ya di ka o naghi egbu egbu." Although we would rather not talk or think about this modern taboo; talking, thinking, and planning for retirement is something we must do, indeed.
To live those golden years in relative comfort, you need money - lots of it! With a longer life comes more expenses, including medical bills. And retirement benefits from governments and pensions may not be there, as deficits and cutbacks occur.
Not preparing for this eventuality does not make it go away. It might even lead to retirement in poverty and misery. Failing to plan means planning to fail. This report is not to scare anyone, unless it is to scare one straight into preparing for one's own retirement. The goal of this article is to inform, to awaken, and refocus commitment to this all important, looming phrase of our lives, if we are lucky enough to get there in the first place.
For those of us in Diaspora, I strongly urge everyone to volunteer to work a few hours in a nursing home during the holiday season. It is one way to give back, and also a way to see, first-hand, what retirement is really like in our host country. Secondly, each of us needs to have in-depth conversations with someone handling the finances of an elderly parent or relative to learn the financial aspects of getting old in Diaspora.
It may help you rethink your choices: building a village mansion without resale value, buying a home and vehicle you cannot really afford, wasting dollars you should be saving, and working yourself to death, when what you need to do right here and now is "cut your coat according to your size."
With real needs ahead, we should focus on important things: our individual and collective retirement, health, education of our children, eradication of poverty, reduction of crime, and fostering of true
prosperity in both our native and host nations.
In Nigeria, we should forsake the politics of corruption, division, suppression, and oppression. Why pay attention to corrupt politicians and leaders who ride around in motorcades full of $100,000 cars, fly in multi-million dollar jets, and live in Saddam Hussein-like mansions while their people lack basic drinking water, electricity, fair roads, sanitation and health care and roofs over their heads? Where women still die needlessly during labor, and countless children perish before the age of five with worse mortality rates than stray dogs, where university graduates can't find self-sustaining employments?
Why worship mortal leaders who plunge the masses into hell on earth? Rather, let us give full attention to more important and urgent matters. We should eschew avarice, hatred, jealousy, and the ugada (upside down) mentality of eating while others starve.
"The primary goal of devising a safe retirement program is to create a sustainable source of income that will benefit you in the long run. Saving money and properly allocating it in different arenas is the first step towards that end," according to Martin Lukac of RateTake.
Every culture has it own way or ways for dealing with retirement. As great as the United States of America is in so many ways, the manner in which many old, poor, and sick Americans are housed in an out-of-sight-out-of-mind way should spur many of us immigrants (who notice this ugly side) to prepare for our own retirement in America. Having overcome adversities in our home countries, immigrants have enhanced threshold for pain; however, we may find retirement in abject poverty in America too much to bear. This is no joke. It is quite a serious matter. It's your life in golden years in preview.
If you think life is challenging during your productive years, think how more challenging it will become when you stop working but still need, at least, 70% (for gentlemen) and 85% (for ladies) of your pre-retirement income just to maintain your current standard of living, if you are in relatively good health. If you have underlying health issues that increase your out-of-pocket costs after insurance, then you are going to need even more funds.
Retirement planning is like insurance planning: you need to have it before you need it. It takes years of dedicated planning and saving to establish enough funds for your old age, according to retirement experts.
For many of us first generation immigrants, our situation is quite unique and will require unique solutions. Many of us have adopted strategies that straddle prevailing retirement programs in Diaspora and those of your native country. These methods are neither mutually exclusive nor are they necessarily compatible. Most of them are untested and therefore fraught with point-of-return uncertainties. In other words, by the time the inherent deficiencies are discovered, you have already retired and don't have time to choose a do-over.
Conditions on the ground and frankly our own myopia in our respective new homelands precluded many of us from starting jobs early where we paid into various retirement systems like social security, 401K or employer pensions programs. Taxi drivers, ice-cream hawkers, house cleaners, child care providers, under-the-table-paid workers, or short-term workers, did not start paying early into the retirement program. Of course, employers were all too happy to oblige us, because they saved money by not contributing their share to our retirement funds.
Compounding is an amazing thing when it comes to savings, either accumulating sizable cushions, or decimating our retirement nest egg. Some of us are using every reason to borrow from our 401K's without understanding the long term disastrous effects. No, you are not paying back yourself the interest incurred. Please educate yourself on how the 401K program works. Those who thought they were outsmarting the system by not paying into, not contributing the maximum, or borrowing against their retirement program are bound to watch their chickens come home to roost when they retire with a depleted reserve.
Many of us were late in homebuying (you are not a homeowner until you have paid off the mortgage) in Diaspora. Before the housing crisis hit hard, some followed the herd mentality by unknowingly buying at the top of the housing market in the boom years. We further exacerbated the situation by using our homes as ATMs, and maxing out Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) loans. Many are now facing foreclosure because we bought homes we could not afford with adjustable rate loans we did not understand, which we cannot refinance (even though rates are low) because of current appraisals and stricter underwriting conditions. Too many of us played the real estate game without first knowing the rules. All the business degrees not withstanding we have still allowed ourselves to fall into this trap.
Real estate should be part of any successful retirement program, so everyone needs to get this part right. Doing it right includes buying right, financing right and paying off the mortgage on your primary residence prior to retirement.
Paying off your mortgage, putting your children through university, and saving for retirement are tall orders and doing them closer to retirement age due to our late start and missteps are even more challenging. That is why prudent use of every resource is in order as we march towards retirement in foreign lands.
How prepared are we to weather the coming storms of inflation or deflation, cuts in entitlements, hikes in taxes, and the additional costs of traveling back and forth to Nigeria?
When that time comes, each of us will have to go down the long retirement road alone. It's not a bad dream you can wake up from to avoid. It will not be a case of "may the last person turn off the light." It might even be a time of "To your tent, Oh Israel."
Although some of us have built houses in our respective villages and made plans to retire there after many years of sojourn overseas, this approach raises many questions: How are you going to retire in Nigeria when your children and, perhaps, grandchildren are here? How can you afford to maintain two homes, one there and another in your overseas base? How can you access medical care in your old age in your village in Nigeria? How can you be safe in your village if the current insecurity remains unabated? Why are you going to rush in when most people want to get out? And if you want to be buried in Nigeria when you die, have you made plans to foot the bill or are you going to let your survivors undergo the rather shameful act of wake-keeping for money so that your body can be flown to Nigeria? Will we start making hay while the sun is shining? When are we going to start fetching water to put out the fire on our burning homes rather than chasing escaping mice? Or are we waiting for greedy and unreliable politicians to do it for us? Who would you rather control your destiny, you or them?
Let us all work on this together. Let us all learn from each other. Share your insights and knowledge and perspectives here. What are you doing to prepare for your own retirement? Why do you think your way is a better course of action? E-mail me your concise and practical ideas in one or two paragraphs. I will compile the responses and publish it for all of us to learn from and possibly adopt. This will be a practical and here-on-earth way we can learn from each other to prepare for this eventuality. Credit will given to you and if you would rather not have your name mentioned in the compilation article(s), please state so in your e-mail and I will abide by your wishes.
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