WHY I WROTE THE BOOK “RETIRE EARLY TO WEALTH AND FAME” After I have left employment of the Federal Government of Nigeria to the corporate world for about five years, I met my immediate boss under whom I retired. He was then the State Director and I had submitted my retirement letter to him. He was worried for me and asked me lots of questions and even informed me that he was delaying my application for a few weeks so that if I changed my mind, I would continue my job as if nothing had happened. Apart from being my boss, we were personal friends and we have the same first names. Five years after I left, I met him in Umuahia, Abia State Nigeria. Now he was not a State Director. He was an Assistant Director and it was clearly written all over his body and face that he was unhappy at his situation. He was usually a well-dressed man. On this occasion, he was dressed in a manner I would consider inappropriate for his status. He complained about being at the wrong side of current leaders hence he is being sidelined. So, out of concern, I asked him if he had thought of retirement to other jobs or something. He was alarmed and expressed his displeasure that I was talking about retirement when he still has two years to reach retirement age of service. In that case, sir, what plan did you make and what would you be doing after retirement? I asked. He got more cross with me and said that it is when he retires that he would plan what to do. I then asked him if all his children have left the university to which I was shocked to learn that two of them are in the university and one of them is in final year in secondary school. As I drove back to my location that day, my mind was preoccupied by thoughts of this man who has only two years to retire from paid employment after thirty five years of service, two children in the university and one yet to enter into the university who has no plan and is not hoping to make any plan until he had retired. His situation is the same as most civil servants who leave service hoping that the ‘almighty’ pension and gratuity would guarantee them a life after salary. The truth is that they retire, invest their gratuity into a business they had not learned beforehand and lose it, get shocked, sick and die if they are lucky. If they are not lucky they stay in the ill-health condition for a long time thereby draining their loved ones before they finally die painfully and in regret. I felt guilty that I had not shared with him my thoughts that led to my early retirement. The guilt drove me to start writing the book. I wrote all night that day. And continued day-after-day until within six months, the book “Retire Early To Wealth And Fame” was published. “Retire Early To Wealth And Fame” holds the record as the book I finished the fastest in all my collections so far. The above is the source of my passion to help people entering or already in paid employment to start now to plan for their retirement whether they want to leave service before time or at the end of the statutory 60 years of age and 35 years of service as is the case in Nigeria or as it applies in any country in the world. My recommendation is that there should be an educational and civil service and employment policy that require people to learn about early retirement planning at school, on entry into paid employment and every three or five years throughout the period of paid employment. So far, what is available for people is a pre-retirement workshop which people are provided with between 3 months and 2 years to their exit from paid employment. This is not just grossly inadequate; it creates fear and anxiety in the salaried income earner who is exposed rather too late to what he needed to have done thirty or more years ago. People need nothing less than the whole working life period to plan and implement suitable retirement planning. Early retirement planning and programme implementation would also help those who may retire suddenly due to ill-health, downsizing, marriage, transfers, political and other upheavals. I would like to spend the rest of my days as an early retirement planning evangelist helping people, organizations, governments take up this important element of our labour welfare laws and life that would help people avoid corruption, live and work with integrity and find wealth, peace and joy in retirement. Two painful truths I have learned in my work in early retirement planning are: • Your gratuity and pension or exit package cannot guarantee you adequate income in retirement regardless of how much it was. You would never see any of the money you saved or get any real value from the currently known investment vehicles of property and stocks after merely five years, and. • Any attempt to start a business with your pension and gratuity on your retirement would lead to losing all money including your savings in a matter of months leading to incurable health problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke. I have developed workbooks, workshop materials and acquired audios and videos to help individuals and organizations to effectively plan and implement a successful early retirement planning programme that works and ensures that you have steady flow of income in retirement without having to work for it. If you or your organization would like to get coaching and guidance for your retirement planning and investments to enable you create sustainable streams of income for a great life in retirement, contact me fnmeribe@outlook, +2348278008112, francisnmeribe
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 09:01:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015