"When To Retire?" - Disccusions by Dr. Sing Lin and Dr. JB Lim

Note:  The blogger forwarded an article entitled “When To Retire? – A Study By Dr. Sing Lin (of the Chinese Institute of Engineers, Taiwan)” to some friends and he received a few interesting feedbacks from his e-buddies.  Reproduced below are the said article and the thought-provoking comment by retired senior medical researcher Dr. Lim Ju Boo.

“When to retire? - A study by Dr. Sing Lin”

It carries a weighty title: "Optimum Strategies for Creativity and Longevity", and was the hard work of a Dr Sing Lin (林星雄博士), a member of National Council of the Chinese Institute of Engineers (Taiwan), USA/Greater New York Chapter.

(http://www.ptarmigannest.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/retirement-age-vs-life-span.pdf )

According to the academic, pension funds in many large American corporations (e.g., Boeing, Lockheed Martin, AT&T, Lucent Technologies, etc.) have in recent years been "over funded" because many retirees who work into their old age and retire after 65 tend to die within two years of retirement.

Many of these late retirees, he observes, do not live long enough to collect their pension money.

Dr Sing Lin says statistics gathered from several corporations indicated that the longer you work, the shorter your life will be.

If people retire at 50, their average life span is 86. If they stop work at 65, their average life span is only 66.8.

An important conclusion from his study is that for every year one works beyond the age of 55, one loses an average of two years of life.

The Boeing experience seems to confirm this: Employees retiring at 65 receive pension checks for only 18 months, on average, prior to death.

Similarly, at Lockheed, employees retiring at 65 receive pension checks for only 17 months, on average, before they die.

Dr David T. Chai, another academic, whom Dr Sing Lin quotes in his research, says the Bell Labs experience is similar to those of Boeing and Lockheed. Chai bases this on his casual observation from newsletters on Bell Lab retirees.

Hardworking retirees apparently place too great a burden on their aging bodies and minds, such that they become stressed out, says Dr Sing Lin.

This leads to serious health problems which will force them to stop work.

With such long-term stress-induced health problems, they die within two years of their retirement.

On the other hand, people who retire at 55 tend to live long and well into their 80s and beyond.

Dr Sing Lin acknowledges that early retirees are probably wealthier or more able to plan and manage their health and career, and this is probably why they can afford to stop work and still live comfortably.

His observations also reveal that many early retirees do not idle their way into old age. They continue to do part-time work at a more leisurely pace, which reduces stress.

He concluded his research with this advice: Plan your career path and save enough so you can retire comfortably at the age of 55 or earlier to enjoy a long and happy retirement life into your 80s and beyond.

"If you are not able to get out of the pressure-cooker or the high-speed battleground at 55 and have to keep on working until the age of 65 or older, you will probably die within 18 months of retirement," he writes.

"By working in the pressure cooker for 10 extra years beyond the age of 55, you give up, on average, at least 20 years of your life."

Feedback from retired senior medical researcher Dr. Lim Ju Boo:

From: ju boo lim

Date: Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 10:24 PM

Dear Sifu Ir. Lau,

Thanks for the interesting statistics correlating retirement age and mortality rates. I thought you have already sent a similar correlation done by actuarial statisticians from an insurance company quite recently. It was a very interesting finding.

I am not surprised by this finding. Obviously as we age, our ability to tolerate routine, mainly stressful and boring work day-in-day-out, bear heavily on our body to recover the stress and psychological damage, and hidden biochemical and physical injuries imposed on your body over extended and accumulated years. The body has no chance to recover from the untold physiological damage from the medical point of view. The finding of Dr. Sing Lin is least surprising to me. 

Wear and tear does take its physical toll, partly because there is no purpose of higher purpose of living except to work for mere physical existence; the longer this physical objective, the shorter that purpose. There is no spiritual fulfillment at all. Office and physical jobs world-wide have no spiritual and psychological objective at all. They are just for mere material existence.

Physical, Mental and Social Well-being:

The social-mental-spiritual component of our total well-being is completely left out in almost all jobs world-wide, as if only the physical entity in life is "all-important"

The human body is not designed for that purpose or domain of existence alone.  It has a higher purpose in life, but we are blinked by our materialism in a physical world, till we “die in harness”. 

In physiology and in medicine we know that the living body is a very, very complex living machinery, each part dependent on the other for its functions and survival.

The Wear and Tear of Life:

Just like a machine, if only one part is driven beyond the tethers of its endurance like a routine job or a daily stressful job, the entire living body, as well as the machine grinds to a premature halt because of fatigue of one component.  Each part of the body or machine depends on the function of the other for the harmony of their total existence.

To appreciate this deeper requires our understanding on how our body works; how it continuously repairs, and heals itself, and in order to achieve this end, it requires rest and a total change of the environment such as an early retirement.

Releasing the job as in early retirement,   and substituting it  for an enjoyable  hobby relaxes  the mind, body and spirit;  a healing balm that  goes a long way  towards a much  faster - mind, physical, emotional , social and spiritual  recovery and  an extension of   life-span to the ends of our genetically-programmed tethers,  probably to 120 years, if not more.

I have much to explain on these physical-psychological-social-spiritual   bio-mechanisms, but a brief glimpse of my thinking all along on this issue will suffice. After all, the adage:

 “All work, and no play, makes Jack a dull boy” holds much weight of truth.

Remember our living body is more than just a mechanical machine. Even a simple mechanical machine made of metal shortens its life-span from metal fatigue after prolonged use, let alone a more complex machine where each component depends on the other to work in harmony.

Self-repair and Recovery:

What’s more, a living body which is billions of times more complex than any man-made machine like an aeroplane or a car.  

A mechanical machine cannot repair itself if broken down, but a living body due to its self-repair programme, design and mechanism can reverse and heal itself until it no longer can execute the programme due to abuse, and repeatedly self-induced injuries, wear and tear.

In fact if I were to ask this question on retirement age and longevity after retirement, I would have given the same answer as Dr. Sing Lin even without any study and statistics. It is based on my understanding on how the human body works, how it is able to repair and heal itself towards longevity. It is programmed that way since the beginning, but we cut short its mechanisms with our lifestyles.

Thanks to Dr Sing Lin and the actuarial scientists who worked independently to confirm my understanding and belief.

I also thank you for sharing this hypothesis with facts and figures of statistics.

Just as Jesus said, "man shall not live by bread alone."

lim juboo

The blogger is pleased to receive the following supplementary comments from his most learned e-buddy, Dr. Lim Ju Boo, who believes, as a hind thought, that there are also health and social disadvantages of an early retirement. 

From: ju boo lim

Date: Thu, Aug 11, 2016 at 12:52 AM

Notwithstanding the health benefit of an early retirement, it is important that some form of post-retirement financial security can be secured for basic needs in life.

Furthermore, health advantage of an early retirement can only be safeguarded as long as the retiree remains physically, mentally and socially active by indulging in anything he enjoys doing at his leisure, including sleeping and waking up according to his inbuilt circadian biorhythm without an alarm clock, without rushing to work in early morning traffic jams, encountering the duress of work pressure, and meeting deadlines under stressful situations.

But if an early retirement means doing absolutely nothing at home except to lie down all day long watching television, eating and sleeping in between; such a lifestyle spells disaster towards a steep decline in the physical, psychological and social well-being for a retiree.

Perhaps such lifestyle is far more detrimental to health than an actively working individual choosing late retirement. 

In short, it is crucial that a retiree remains physically active by taking up some form of physical activity such as gardening, helping to do daily housework and chores, taking up any hobby he truly enjoys at his own pace without any pressure from outside. 

A health-protective diet of plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, maintenance of desirable body-weight without indulgence in excessive eating, ensuring restriction of caloric intake, will go a long way towards many more years of optimal health, and extended longevity.

regards

jb lim

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Postcript: The blogger is grateful to a friend, Yoon Tai Meen, for highlighting the following article of an opposing view i.e. “the later you retire, the longer you live”:

“Do those who retire early live longer?”

By Richard Knight and Charlotte McDonald

BBC News

23 July 2012

See:  http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18952037

Among other things, the following points are notable:

1.       So although it may appear to be the case that people who retire earlier will, on average, die earlier - the exact opposite of the claim that's often made - one can't deduce that retirement itself is the reason. There is probably no causal connection at all.

2.    But there is some truth behind the suggestion that workers in some professions die earlier than others. That is, perhaps, unsurprising; some jobs are more physically demanding than others, and may be more damaging to health.

3.    Again, the reasons for the different life expectancies between job types might not be straightforward. ….the gap might have more to do with socio-economic class - labourers and cleaners are more likely to come from poorer backgrounds than lawyers and accountants - than to the nature of the work itself.