On a recent South Africa trip, I got to know a few retirees. One of them retired last year. She was a little unsure what to do with all that time so she went around asking everyone who'd retired before her. The answer came back the same every time: I wish I'd done this sooner.
That answer came back to me many times over the 16-days trip as I kept noticing myself and the younger folks on their phones taking calls and flipping open laptops to catch up on work, while the retirees just sat there, basking in it.
I want to retire at 55. That used to be Singapore's actual retirement age, back in the 1960s, before it climbed to 60, then 62, then 63, and 64 from this July, with 65 already pencilled in for 2030. I'm aiming for the number the country itself used to think was enough.
A friend of mine, Ashok Samuel, used to run private equity risk at GIC. He retired early, and unlike most people who set a financial target, some number like $2 million liquid before they'll even consider it, he decided he'd pull the hand brake at 55 regardless. Hit the age, and that's it, ready or not.
We walked Botanic Gardens together for over 2 hours once. What perked him up most, he said, was simply catching up with people every day. I get that. During Covid, catching up with people, even over video calls on lunchclub, was my own highlight of most weeks.
Part of why work never really ends here is the expectation that you stay reachable, holiday or not. Singapore is pro-business, and in white collar jobs especially, that headspace follows you everywhere, officially on leave or not.
It's different elsewhere. In Germany, a colleague once prepped for a 3-month trip with zero expectation of checking in. German courts have ruled that contracts forcing workers to stay available during leave don't hold up. She was legally entitled to just disappear.
A Singapore cabin crew I met at a bar in India once told me the job has odd hours as compared to his past job in logistics. But once it's done, it's done. No residue left behind to occupy your head rent-free. I felt exactly that driving Uber for a while. Switch off the app, and that was it. For the longest time, I'd never felt so liberated.
At a recent event, a few of us joked about how the small talk used to go. Years ago it was how are you, we're hiring, so are we. Now it's we're laying off, so are we.
One of them is a CPO at a PE-backed company that's looking to sell soon. Someone asked how he's holding up. He said he's fine either way. He'll just become a farmer.
It wasn't entirely a joke. I've lost count of the people telling me they're sick of white collar work and would rather drive Grab, or work ground staff at the airport. On my own trip, one of the guys does gardening for a living now. Another, a retiree, works at the National Gallery, doing exactly the kind of job you'd have looked down on ten years into a corporate career.
A job's whole point used to be security. If triple hatting, the corporate nonsense, and the constant layoffs just buy you more stress instead, what's actually left to trade for?
I've mentioned before that I have 4 kids, and their education alone is a long, expensive commitment. Between that and old debt I've been paying down for years, I've barely built up savings of my own.
Even so, the idea of doing more work is starting to wear on me. And I'm clearly not the only one. Plenty of my peers are just as sick of it, the escalating demands, the unrealistic targets, the pressure that keeps adding up.
You used to be able to coast in one job and retire into the sunset. Now you get replaced by AI before the sun even rises.
And I'm independent. I can't imagine how much worse it is for employees stuck tolerating decisions from senior management that seem to come down to a coin toss, with zero consequences for the people flipping the coin, just because they happened to land in the C-suite.
I'm 47 now, 7 years out from 55. But that's my finish line too. The modern professional identity just isn't worth the peace of mind it costs.
My retirement funds probably won't stretch to the yearly travel I love.
But given the choice between travelling while still opening my laptop for a report, or just chilling at a local kopitiam without a care in the world, I'll take the kopitiam. Plus I get my bak chor mee fix in the same sitting. Now isn't that just life.