135. Plan for Retirement (NOW) with Aadil Abbas and Prina Shah

SPEAKER_02 0:16

I've leveled your teacher, a consultation, a china, a keynote speech, a podcaster. I help you to develop your leaders with your team workers. And I help you to optimize your organizational cultures. I'm here to help you find ways to change your workplaces. Why? Because we spend more time in our waiting days at work than we do with our loved ones. It has to be a good place to be. So in this podcast, you can expect a mix of interviews with amazing thought leaders and then some solo episodes from myself as well. By now you know Aden very well, like I do too. He has been a repeat guest on this podcast, and I will link to all of his past episodes in the show notes, so you have to check them out. Aden and I have been discussing financial wellness and the cost of living for quite a while now because workplaces are not doing it. We have discussed why we need to discuss financial wellness on career changes and your financial wellness in respect to that, the sandwich generation, and how workplaces can better support the sandwich generation from a wellness and financial wellness perspective as well. And today we have something very special in store for you in the form of retirement. We are taking you from cradle to grave to talk about all things financial wellness. So let's listen to Adil. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Ways to Change Your Workplace podcast with myself, your host, Prina Shah. And I'm so happy to be bringing back my friend Adil Abbas, all the way from Sydney, back to your ears. Adil is a financial planner for own financial planning. Adil, welcome. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

I'm good, Prina. Wonderful to be back here again, and thank you for the opportunity as always.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

My pleasure. Now, Adil, last time we talked about the sandwich generation, and you dropped many a truth bomb there. And I've had some questions. So I want to talk to you today about the issue or the looming, looming thing that we're all going to have to go through the topic of retirement. Okay. Now, Adil, I've got a few points. As you said in the last episode, we are aging well and we're also living longer. Therefore, we're potentially staying at work longer. That's one aspect I want to talk about. The other aspect is in relation to that, how is the workplace going to consider the needs of these retirees as well? Adil, from what I'm seeing from my workplace consulting, there's five generations now within one workplace. So under one roof, we generally have around five generations working together, which I think is fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

But they're very fascinating, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:09

But they all have differing needs, and organizations I still believe don't know how to best support the elder workers, so to speak, in the workplace who are transitioning potentially to retirement. Adil, I have many ideas and many options for the workplace, but from a financial planning perspective, I really want your thoughts and your ideas on this whole concept of aging, living longer, we are healthier, we're staying at work therefore longer. And a big word, the end, spoiler alert for all of us, we're all gonna have to retire, Adil. Give me your thoughts from a financial planning perspective. What are you seeing? What are you coming across in your world, Adil?

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Retirement, Freena, yes. Oh my god. Uh retirement actually, when I talk to my clients, retirement, the idea of retirement is a lot of people get very excited and fun, it's a lot of fun associated with it and the things they would want to do and all that. However, a lot of people are also stressed about the fact to ask questions to us around can I retire? How much money would I need? Do I have enough to retire? The money aspect of it is very stressful for a lot of people because people haven't actually thought through the money aspect of it. And one of the things which people have to realize now is that with, as you mentioned, with advances in healthcare and average life expectancy here in Australia being in the mid-80s for most people, and with the average age of retirement being actually in the early 60s, we are take talking of funding your lifestyle for nearly 25 to 30 years ahead of you. It is no longer just five or ten years of retirement. It's actually looking at retirement as a phase by itself. It's the third phase of your life, essentially, if you think of it, or the fourth phase, however you want to think of your life. Uh so when you're in your 30s or 40s, or even in the 50s, I find when I talk to clients, the word retirement is something you associate with your parents, and not for yourself. Uh so we start to kind of get our clients to make this a much more positive conversation by calling it let's work towards a work optional lifestyle. Let's not call it retirement. So, which essentially means that you're working working because you choose to and not because you have to. So getting clients to work towards this goal it turns the idea of retirement completely on its head because then retirement age is determined by you and not at a predetermined age set by the government or society. Because you decide when do you when do you have enough to actually stop working or work in a limited capacity or do whatever you want to do. It's not set by any government mandates or by by what society thinks when you should retire. Now, this can be a very motivating goal for many clients because it starts to give them a new meaning towards their, I would say, career and their jobs. There's a purpose now. Rather than thinking, what am I doing at work every day and why am I doing this job and you know, all those questions which come regularly, which come to everybody. Like, you know, there is this highs and lows at work we have. Because now the job or the career or work you do is a means to an end which is meaningful for them.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Ah deal, okay, okay, okay. You you're talking to future prena. Oh my gosh, Adil. Okay, this is a new concept that I'm gonna jump on. So before I jump onto this new concept, an old concept I'll talk to. So, from a workplace perspective, you know it, I know it. Everybody talks about the concept of um phased retirement, which for people who don't know what that means, that means uh turning your job into a part-time, slowly, slowly, slowly, phasing you out of the workforce into retirement land. Now, Adil, one of the conversations I've been having with my partner and my friends is like, I don't know whether I want to retire. What does retirement even mean? So, Adil, you are just turning everything around now, and you have called it a work optional lifestyle. So you're just you're just throwing this bomb into the mix, which is a beautiful bomb, I have to say, because this is a new concept for all of us to consider now. What is a work optional lifestyle for us? We're not even using the R-word, we're not even using retirement anymore. And it's it's it gives us a new meaning to work and life. And Adil, I think this is the way the workplaces need to consider their talk as well from a financial wellness perspective to their elderly employees, work optional lifetime.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

How can we even I would say, Prina, not just elderly, it could be anybody to say, how can we support you in your career development, your promotions, or whatever you aspire to do, what is the end goal you're working towards? Because if you think of the, I think in our experiences, we know people are people want a certain promotion because they they organizations don't understand the true motivations of why somebody wants to go down a certain path, why they want to go part-time, why they want to do something different. And if the idea is, okay, we are here to help create this work optional lifestyle for you, it will start to like you can then talk about skills. It can lead to a skills conversation versus something else. I feel I don't know. This I think this can be it can be a very powerful HR concept as well. I feel like HR professionals like yourself should come somehow build it into a framework of when you when you're having your career conversations, maybe the manager guides should talk about talk about work optional lifestyle with your employees and see whether whether that leads to a better conversation around careers and pay and promotion and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

Beautiful. Adil, and thank you for yeah, clarifying that this work optional lifestyle can definitely talk to this retirement conversation that we're talking to here, but then we can talk to grads about, you know, what's your work optional lifestyle? What are your plans? We can start from the beginning rather than at the end.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Portfolio of careers. I think I've heard that you talk about that, Prina, on some of your podcasts. You're having a portfolio of careers. Yes. And that can be probably tied into the work optional lifestyle concept. It's like, okay, that is why we have portfolio of careers, because you're trying to build different skills and thereby generate income in different ways. Because one fun fact which people actually don't think about it, I feel is I it becomes a when I talk to my clients about income during retirement or work optional lifestyle, yeah. What people don't realize is that actually during this phase of your life, you are drawing income from multiple sources, not from one source, because you're drawing income from your, for example, your savings, your investments, from the part-time work, government-funded, age pension, or any other benefits they might have, inheritance potentially, uh, some part-time work and things like that. So, in fact, you're not tied to one source of income. If you work towards it, your income actually comes from different sources. And it's a very, it's a it's a it's a different way to think about it. Say that let's build out let's build out different income income streams for ourselves. That's how I talk about this plan. Let's build income streams so that you're not reliant on just one income stream.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

Yes, we cannot be reliant just on work itself. Adil, I think you've given me and lots of our people, our audience today, a new consideration of how we can create a work optional lifestyle for us right now, not at retirement age, definitely a retirement age if we need to have that conversation. But if we start right now, it's going to help us for our retirement, Adil, if we consider it in this respect. And let me get on my high horse. From a workplace perspective, all HR people talk about the employee experience, the employee life cycle, you know, all of the trendy words. We need to add this into our vernacular. How can we create a work optional lifestyle for you, employee? Because Adil, the other point I really want to talk to is are we working to live or living to work? And that's another philosophical concept that you know we can have another long podcast conversation about Adil, but I will finish it there. And I cannot thank you enough for this new concept that you've shared with us. Work optional lifestyle people. Adil's details are in the show notes. My details are in the show notes. Let's continue the conversation. Get in touch with either one of us on LinkedIn and let's, yeah, let's change the way of the workplace. Adil, thank you so much. Until the next time.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Thanks, Brina. Thanks again. See ya.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

How good was that episode? If you liked it, be sure to share it with a couple of other people. Also in the show notes are details about my newsletter. Keep in touch. I send a newsletter out around once a month. It won't be spammy, it will be very practical. And if we're not connected on LinkedIn yet, we must be connect with me on LinkedIn. And on Instagram, I am prina.shar. I will see you somewhere else or in the next episode. Until then, goodbye.