How many of us are retired or semi retired

[TrevorW]

I work 5 days a week at the moment and it looks like for another 10 years at least (since they moved the pension bacK) but Im working towards a 4 day week

:thumbsup:

[supernova1965]

4 days or less per week enforced semi retirement due to physical disability would love to work more but you can't have everything:shrug: am reasonably happy to be able to do any work though:D

[snowyskiesau]

I call myself semi-retired, sounds better than unemployed :)
I'm at retirement age but don't really have enough money to do so. I hope to get some sort of work now I'm settled in a new home.

[Ric]

Not even close for me.

I've got at least 14 years to go before I consider retirement. then there's our farm which I'll being working on forever. That's what keeps me going.

[traveller]

Is there a choice called would like to retire???
I am sure most of us fit into that category. :lol:
Bo

[AstralTraveller]

How about "Looks like I'll have to work till I drop"?

[Barrykgerdes]

What does retired mean?
I work 7 days a week. Have done for the last 25 years. Since I gave up (?)work. The money still comes rolling in.

Barry

[Stardrifter_WA]

Sort of semi retired. I have jsut started back at work for three half days a week, every weekend is a long weekend Fri-Mon. Best of both worlds :D

[TrevorW]

Hey Peter where can I get a job like that hope it pays well

[GrahamL]

Work till I drop is likely what will happen

[GeoffW1]

Hi,

I'm a retired teacher, on the "old Super scheme". I paid in a packet there.

I sometimes think about a friend of mine, a fellow engineer (my first life). He held a number of very senior jobs in Oz manufacturing, and usually worked at least 6 days.

He planned and invested and retired at 60, the ideal, or so it seemed. Soon he got the fidgets, and decided to do some casual hours in the industry. That grew and grew, and now he is back to 5 days!!

I never felt the slightest urge of that sort, being as lazy as they come. :lol:

Cheers

[erick]

I wish :sadeyes:

[Stardrifter_WA]

Yeah, it does pay reasonably well. I found this job in the hidden job market. It was never advertised. Just got lucky, although it was calculated luck, just kept my name and resume out there in the places that I would have liked to work in...finally, it paid off.

Found most of my work in the hidden job market, over the years. Many jobs just don't get advertised. Usually get filled internally, via friends or people who walk off the street. :)

[mozzie]

work 7 days a week!!! the phone never stops ringing...20 years left till i retire..don't think i keep on laying bricks till then!!!!!44 know been laying bricks since i started at 15...but the monies great

[Zaps]

An old friend of mine used to refer to himself as "pseudo-retired". He'd take work if it interested him, but he didn't strictly need it.

[leon]

Semi retired cruising around OZ and loving it, pick up some work occasionally.

Leon

[ballaratdragons]

Forced retirement due to work injuries. :mad2:

I have worked my guts out and enjoyed it my whole life (often 6 days a week), then decided to have a change and got injured in the 1st year there :sadeyes:

and I get soooo bored some days.
And I hate doing all the physio.

I really look forward to going back to work some day.

[TrevorW]

Hope you do Ken

[michaellxv]

Hmmm retirement, still a distant dream.
I wonder if it will still exist when I get there.

[bojan]

Still 2-3 years to go.. Then I will do things because I want to do them.. not because I have to do them (to survive or because someone else want them to be done)..

[Stardrifter_WA]

Don't lose hope Ken. :) I know how it feels, having had half my body broken, literally. I was serious injured quite a few years ago and it took 8 years to recovery. Through a lot of hard work and tears, I made it back again, despite what the doctors said. :) If you want to make it back...you will. :thumbsup: There is always something out there that you could do; you just have to look hard to find it. Nothing comes easily, but it will come if you look hard enough.

Best of luck with your recovery. :thumbsup:

[ballaratdragons]

Thanks Trevor and Peter.

3 years already passed, hopefully I'm on the improve :)
I tore the Tendons off both elbows and they won't re-attach, but they are slowly getting better.
I tried part-time work but it did more damage than good :rolleyes:

Oh well, this thread needs to continue on its way.

Next :lol:

[Saturnine]

I would say of myself , that I'm under employed. Since redundancy 3 years ago have not been able to find a full time job, seems like if your over 60, employers don't think your a good long time prospect . Still have 3 kids at school as well and a mortgage so life could be better.
Did I mention that I'm a tradesman,. that are supposedly in short supply. Would love to be able to retire at 65 and concentrate on astro and golf and surfing but the super nest egg is not growing like it was supposed to due to above circumstances.

Jeff

[DavidU]

With our improving income my wife and I can now retire at 123 instead of 128 a few years ago:lol:
I don't think I could handle retirement as I would get bored quickly.
I work 6 to 7 days a week often more than 60 hours.

[Poita]

Absolutely, most jobs I have had have been a result of me approaching employers directly, even though no job was advertised. Didn't always get me work straight away, but often within a couple of months.
I have done a lot of hiring in my time, and few people realise that people *hate* the rigmarole of advertising, interviewing and hiring someone. You would nearly always take someone internally, was recommended or who approached you if they were fairly suitable. I only ever got one job from a want ad, the rest have been from the direct approach.

I have at least another 20 years working ahead of me though if I live that long. I've had cancer twice now, burned my face off once, screwed up my hand, had various internal bits removed, but I'm like an old timex...
It will take me that long just to pay of the HECS debt I am currently amassing ;^) and the youngest is only 5 and may well be living with me life-long, so I reckon I'll keep working until no-one wants me anymore :lol:

[Barrykgerdes]

I got my first job by answering an ad in the paper. After that the positions I obtained were by direct application or offer.

I was told very early that the secret was to find what you liked to do and then get some one to pay you to do it.

I loved playing with radio and electronics and became quite good at it but never thought of working at it until I was approached by one of my "Ham" mates who suggested I try to get a job where he worked in the navy radio workshop. After a year procrastinating I took up his offer.

Never looked back.

Planned my retirement at 55 and worked towards it on the old CSS scheme. It paid off. I am now retired with a lovely indexed pension paid for by all you lucky tax payers!

Barry

[lacad01]

Yeah I wish also :(, too far off to think about it. Often working 6 days a week and odd hours due to working with colleagues located in various time zones.

[ZeroID]

Divorce, redundant, recessions .... I've got about 2.5 years to go then I starve.

In reality I remarried and we're doing alright but first marriage cost me my super and my house cos my ex had nothing and took all mine. before that I'd already lost best part of $250,000 + to the previous couple of recessions, '91 and '97ish. So called 'Investment Mortgage Funds" :mad2:

Then got made redundant nearly 2 years ago, but got my 'job' back by being picked up by the company my role was outsourced to. Great ! except I lost $25,000 p.a. in the deal. And my medical coverage, parking, bonuses, car allowance, everything ....
And my chances of finding anything if I leave here is about zilch, over 60, over the hill.

Just as well the redundancy and company super ( restarted after my divorce 10 years ago ) paid off the mortgage but now I've got almost no super funds built up. had to join the new Govt one but it has a long way to go to be any use.
I'll end up working till about 70 I guess, might be able to afford to eat till 75 then ...

Better go buy another lotto ticket ... probably the best bet. :rolleyes:

[PCH]

Since it's a government requirement that we contribute to super schemes in the first place (and I'm not saying that's a bad idea!), they should be bloody well capital guaranteed by the government.

There are too many stories like Brent's where the super fund manager has lost all or much of a person's fund. And all that happens at these times is that we get these jerks coming on TV (probably paid government stooges) telling us how "super is a long term thing, and now would be a bad time to cash out your super". Yeah, why pull it out now when it's only worth half, - why not wait until they've lost it all! It does happen. And the fund managers always take their commission annually whether your fund has gone up or down in value. Parasites.

A few years ago, I started an insurance policy with a guy who also sold super - thouigh not to me. A couple of years later (2008 - resources boom peak) when my annual statement came through, guess what? They'd included by mistake, the front sheet of some other poor saps SF investment details. This guy had invested $200k, and after one year, the wonderful guys from the SF managers had turned it into just $120k. That is shameful, - and that was in BOOM times !! God alone knows how they perform in less bountiful economic times.

We have a SMSF, - right from when we first started in business yonks ago. And the factory that we used to work from in our business is our superfund. It's fully paid for itself years ago, and the rent since then has paid for other residential properties that also form part of the SF. I wouldn't go with a government super scheme for all the tea in China.

Rant over :)

[TrevorW]

I agree we should be able to manage our own super money, I lost over $30k of the value in the last GFC

[Poita]

You can manage your own super, and it has been that way for a while.
Talk to a financial advisor if you need help setting it up.Most Government Super funds have performed exceptionally well (REST for instance), but all investments carry risk.

[TrevorW]

What I meant by manage is take the money in my super fund and invest it how I see fit (not be tied to a superfund) along with my 9% EFS

Cheers

[bmitchell82]

mmmm well im a fair way from retirement possibly 30-40 years :P by the time i get to retirement age the goal posts possibly would have moved 5 times........ to the govts advantage!

[TrevorW]

Yeah I feel sorry for this and future generations unless something drastic happens you will be working until your 80.

Look at Greece, full pension at 55 put them in the poo

[bojan]

They are in the poo because of other things.. pension was supposed to be earned and sustainable, why it wasn't, that is the question...
The answers that will follow from others will always be full of political dogma and bias, depending of who is answering (applies to this one as well ;))

[TrevorW]

Bojan I didn't think for one moment that was the sole reason for their financial crisis :thumbsup:

The expected lifespan of baby boomers is 83 years so if I retire at 67 I'd expect a pension for some 16 years

No doubt in the future the lifespan will signifcantly improve and I would hope that most people would not start work until they are at least 20-25 not like many of us who started when we were 15.

50 years of working for someone else and taking a lot of ****e from people is enough in my opinion. :screwy:

However the way things are going I think I'll have to work part time in retirement to survive unless of course I win Lotto between now and then :shrug:

:D

[Jen]

I have a long way to go before that retirement day comes for me dam it :rolleyes: unless i win lotto :lol:
But i do actually love my job :)

[Kevnool]

So Jen if i walk past your office one day and pop in again will you still be in that same building ???

Now sorry i got off track but in my position i,m the same as Jen.Not sure in the loving part of it though. Another name change now as we are roads and maritime sevices.

Cheers Kev.

[Jen]

:lol: hehe yep i will be in the same building LOL :thumbsup:

[ZeroID]

I used to love my job, had challenges and rewards but after the redundant, get your own job back thing now I'm just a remote desk jockey doing as I'm told. Used to manage $500,000 projects, now doing the job of some wet behind the ears kid just out of PC school.
And they wonder why I spend so much time designing and building astro gear at work. I think Stellarium is always running on one of my work PCs.

Gave this some more thought after my original posting though. After some of the stories on here I can't complain too much. At least I have most of my health, give or take a few niggles and can do most of the things I want to do and generally have the resources financially to fund them. Own the house, got a couple of fast cars and a wine\beer\whisky cellar and eat well. Enough friends and a passion for still doing stuff including astro, photography, hiking etc. I guess there is always a feeling of not quite getting to where you wanted to be at the end of your working life but on the other hand I have done lots of other **** ! .... and still ready to do some more. :D

Ah, bring it on !! ....

[GeoffW1]

Sickening :rofl::rofl::rofl:

[David Niven]

Like most peoples, my super lost more then a hundred grands in the 2008 GFC and the fund manager shamelessly keep deducting their fee, comes rain or shine, with no apology!The government should legislate to make the fee payable, as a proportion of the profit or growth and not as a percentage of your fund amount.No wonder the fund managers and the banks are laughing all the way.....
Come to think of it, I could have filled every room in my house with the latest, respectable branded telescopes.
And you get tormented every night on the telly by advertisement like how the fund managers are BUILDING YOUR WEALTH THROUGH YOUR SUPER!
Perhaps, the Office of Fair Trading should look into these shameless adverts that are no where near the truth.
Wealth Destruction is certainly the order of the day when you invest more in your super.

[bojan]

Yes.. it is a problem.
However, we also have to be realistic here and look at the super from another angle.

For example, 10 years ago, super that was imposed on us from our employer had 3 options: conservative, moderate and aggressive - and this was pretty much all in our control.
I opted for moderate strategy, while some other chose aggressive.
After some time (a year), the result was that I was loosing 2% per year, but others were loosing 7% or even 10% per year (despite regular contributions).
In hindsight, I should have been even less greedy and opted for conservative option - and my super would have grown by 1.5% instead.

In 2008, my super (again the same one) lost quite a bit but it could have been much much worse if I had aggressive strategy in place.


I am not saying that we are to blame for our losses (because the system wasn't and still isn't good - as someone mentioned earlier, super managers should loose or get their commission in parallel with us customers) but I am just trying to point out that those ads are actually playing the notes that resonate with greed in their customers, and unfortunately they are getting away with it.

[Barrykgerdes]

The whole issue of compulsory superanuation is an open invitation for rorts. Luckily I do not have to be a part of it. The managers make a good living out of it but I don't think the contributors get much.

The first thing shown in the TV adds is the comparasin of the amount of money you can expect from various managers.

If you think $500000 is enough to survive on in retirement do your sums. I admit I live quite comfortably on my super but it would be different if I needed to start out again by myself and my super is worth about $1.5m in real terms.

If you own your own house a single person can live on about $15000 P/A.
With the common inflation rate that seems to average around 3% your investments need to increase by that much each year before you can take a dividend. This means that your $500000 must have a nett earning of 6% Just to break even. I don't think there are many super funds that have averaged this sort of a dividend over the last 5 years.

If you want to live well in retirement run your own "super fund" by investing at least as much of your salary (eg 9%) in guilt edge securities and compound the interest.

Barry

[bojan]

I do.. and my contribution is maximum I can legally put into it. but I am still far away from your figures. However, it will last long enough... I don't intend to leave what's left after me to anyone anyway. The last resort will be Dr Nitschke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Nitschke)'s phone number...

[Barrykgerdes]

Maybe you can make a commission from being his agent.:thumbsup:

Barry

[GraemeT]

One week to go!

[jjjnettie]

Enforced retirement.
Haven't worked for 2 years and I'm so envious of you people who have super and savings to fall back on.
Government benefits of $380 (I got a little extra because I have kids under 16yrs part time) a week isn't easy to live on, especially when most of that goes on rent. Have recently been put on disability, which is a blessing, yay!
Keep putting as much money aside as you can towards your retirement.
You want to spend your retirement "Living" not "Surviving"

[TrevorW]

JJ, I was because my wife has MS and to receive a Health Care Card I had to earn under a certain amount but no point now as the govt still considers it income, so I end up taking time off without pay to reduce my income.

With the HCC she pays around $30 a month instead of $200 a month for her medicines plus other savings

I'd have to earn at least another $10000 a year to make it worth her not having the HCC and then I wouldn't be able to have time off when she needs me too

Bit of a catch 22 situation, the Govt says we should invest more in super yet penalise the lower end of the pay scale because the upper end were taking advantage of the system salary sacrificing thousands into super to reduce their annual tax bill

[Gem]

Sorry to hear it hasn't been easy... hope it picks up!

[OneOfOne]

I consider myself "underemployed" at the moment. The company I worked for during the last 11 years were doing a development project for a new product (which would have been the best in the world by far) but because of changes beyond our control (manufacturers ceasing manufacture of the micro chip we had done 3 months development, third party in development agreement changing their protocol etc). Eventually the parent company pulled the pin and we were all out of a job (April 1st actually). Since then I have been doing casual programming for a company who manufactures scoreboards for football, cricket, golf, rugby etc. Really interesting work, but some weeks are less than 10 hours.

Still looking for full time work, but not successful, not sure if age is a factor....I can remember when they landed on the Moon!

[avandonk]

After two divorces and paying for my house about three times over I am OK.
I worked for about forty years in top end science. The last thirty at CSIRO. I resigned at 54.9 years of age as your pension under the old scheme is calculated differently after 55 years of age. This scheme was superseded by the 'new' scheme which is no longer available. They did their best to convince everyone to go to the new scheme. I did the calculations in my head and smelled a very big rat. In my case resign at 54.9 years pension $39,000 fully indexed at 55! Resign or retire after 55 by one week pension about $22,000! What would you do!
I resigned at 54.9 years. I walked away with $220,000 cash as well as the pension which is now about $43,000 and for life and indexed!.
I still had a lot of work to do but I did not trust the assurances I got from my superiors. I had some personality differences with one superior. To put it simply he was an idiot.

On balance though my contribution to Australia in sheer dollar terms is in the many millions for the work we did and the revenue it generates.

I realize now I should have used my mathematical brain in fudging finance and be paid millions for shunting bits of paper! Not very rewarding intellectually at all.

This is why I can afford and do to help others.

See I am not such a good bloke after all. I am sixty two now and if I marry my new wife will get about 70% of my pension again indexed for life if I die. Sorry girls my GF is first in line and if she wasn't she would kill me. So I have nothing to lose or gain!

Bert

[OneOfOne]

I used to work at Telstra and one of the guys was hanging out for 54.99, he basically wanted to leave just a couple of days before his birthday so he could get a bit extra pay. Problem was, the person who had authority to sign off went on leave at the crucial time! He had to get several people to go through hoops just to help him out....most of us just thought "karma"! At times he was very annoying and arrogant so when he started complaining about how we was going to miss out, it was pretty hard to find someone who cared :) He had done all of his calculations and I remember him saying at one time "now with my cash I can put that into some sort of bank deposit, I can easily get 10%, current rates are 13% or more" (back when interest rates were that high, wonder how many people today could survive 18% on their house). He could see that all of his calculations did not take into account things like "but what if the person signing is not there?"

Many people left Telstra at that time under the same circumstances. I stayed in the old scheme too, but when I left at 42 I was a long way off a pension and a percentage of what I was on back then would not have made a great income stream so I took out what cash I could (paid off the house) and transferred to a "normal" scheme. In hindsight, had I put all of my remaining super into cash, I would be light years ahead of where I am now 11 years later :mad2: Wouldn't we all :sadeyes:

[rogerg]

Full time (5 day) work and small business on the side. Wishing for 4 days work. At crossroads with my career due to redundancies and the like, not sure where the next 5 years will leave me and how I'm going to earn enough money to be as comfortable in 40 years as I am now.

Retirement 35+ years away.

:shrug:

[Stardrifter_WA]

Like Avandonk, after two divorces I was left with little to build on for retirement. :sadeyes: I still have 8 or 9 years to go, although I am sort of semi retired. I work part time, 3 days a week, and it is good, but at this rate will have to work until I drop, but having said that my new job is really rewarding, so that wouldn't be that bad. :) Fortunately, I own my house and have no debt, so I guess I am luckier than most, so not complaining :)

As long as my eyesight holds out and there are clear skies, I will have a happy life.

I am putting up my Sirius observatory at the moment and am looking forward to just being able to go out without having to lug all the gear out. I have been very lucky here, I had the electricity company cover the street light, yes they actually did it, and my neighbours are very cooperative. I would love to move to the country for darker skies, but I guess we just can't have everything. :sadeyes: :)