Note: The blogger forwarded an article entitled “When
To Retire? – A Study By Dr. Sing Lin (of the Chinese Institute of Engineers, Taiwan
“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.
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
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.
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
----------------------
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
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.