Retirement

A few of us from college went to meet our batchmate Ashok, who had been through a serious illness. We gathered around his bed and, as old friends do, spoke of hostel canteens, professors and ridiculous nicknames until the illness briefly disappeared from the room. Then someone remembered a story from Ashok’s younger days. “Arre, what happened to that bottle of wine you bought on your first trip to France?” Ashok had brought back an expensive bottle from France in the 1980s and said he would open it only on a truly special occasion. He smiled wryly: he still had it. There was silence. Since that trip, Ashok had married, built a career, bought a home, raised two children, watched them marry, and become a grandfather. Yet somehow, none of those occasions had seemed special enough.
The wine had not gone bad. The occasion had.

The tragedy was that the bottle was saved for a “special” occasion that never arrived. Money often suffers the same fate. If the future occasion for using it is not defined in advance, every present occasion looks slightly premature.
This is not an argument against saving, investing or delaying gratification. Without deferred gratification, most financial plans would collapse. The problem begins when a habit that was useful during the earning years becomes an unquestioned reflex in retirement — and the financial plan never asks whether that reflex still serves the person.
Retirement planning usually handles financial uncertainty reasonably well. A good plan allows for uneven returns, inflation, unexpected expenses, longevity and rising medical costs. But money is only one side of retirement. The other side is the retiree’s ability to use and enjoy that money — and that ability does not remain constant. Health, mobility, appetite, companionship and enthusiasm may not be available in the same measure. This is enjoyment risk. That is why treating retirement as one long, uniform inflation-adjusted period can be misleading.
The money required at 63 is not the same as the money required at 83. At 63, money can buy experiences. At 83, it may mostly buy convenience, care and protection. Both are important, but not interchangeable. A rupee that could have paid for a family holiday or long-postponed cruise may no longer serve the same purpose ten or fifteen years later.
This is why a retirement plan should not have only survival goals. It should also have an explicit “Enjoy Life Goal.” Not a vague line called “travel” or “lifestyle,” but a named, costed, time-bound goal: an annual family holiday, help at home, or a cruise while both spouses can still walk comfortably.
Many retirees do not under-spend because they lack money. They under-spend because every withdrawal feels like damage to the corpus. Leaving wealth behind for children is valid if it is conscious. But it should not happen merely because the person who built the corpus never gave himself permission to use it. During working life, not touching the corpus was a virtue. In retirement, never touching it can be a design failure.
That design failure has a human cost. When we are young, life seems to be passing us by. We run to keep up — with studies, careers, EMIs, children’s education, retirement targets and rising costs. Retirement is supposed to be when that race finally eases. For many, it never does. The problem is no longer lack of money. It is lack of permission.
Truth be told, that is not financial prudence. It is delayed gratification outliving its purpose. Ashok finally opened the bottle that day to celebrate forty years of our friendship. Perhaps that is the real lesson. A good retirement plan should not only protect your future; it should also give you permission to enjoy the moments that are already here. The question is whether you will allow yourself to open the bottle of wine for the special occasions in your own life — before those occasions pass you by.