Is the concept of retirement dead? I know for some people who would have liked to work till age 92 but were forcibly retired at 58 this sounds wrong, but most of us retirement is likely to be far less traumatic! Will we just lie down and say ‘oh I am 58 and will not work any more?’. The answer is no. There are many upsides to aging.

If you are 60 years of age there are many senior citizen homes which will be looking for you for many services. You could start by doing some research on the habits of old people. Of what they wish to do in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Will somebody pay you for this? Initially maybe not, but at a later date if you have good quality of data and a good community, you become a valuable person.

Many of the cities in their quest to become smarter will try to build infra that can be used gainfully by the senior citizens. Once you run a community your feedback will be useful. There are many, many nice and successful senior citizen homes in South India, the West and the North need this know how and if you could provide that service you could be of help. Not sure where to start? Get 10 of your 50 year old friends and ask them where they would want to live from their age of 70 till their age of 85. Create a co-operative (or a LLP), buy land and build one for yourself and your friends. Soon your siblings, classmates, and friends will join in. Create the infra. Most of the senior citizens are finicky about food, health services, polite staff, and transport. Go and build one. Do not worry about demand, there is more, more, more than enough demand.

As for me I am sure there will be a huge demand for training for RETIREMENT, corpus accumulation, how to withdraw while in retirement, and for training the staff in banks about ‘how to deal with senior citizens’. I will not be surprised if banks give senior bankers space in their branches to sit and counsel senior citizens about their financial requirements. The regular staff just does not have the time, patience, skill sets, or knowledge to handle the senior citizen. The prototypes need to be broken, and broken fast. There is a huge highly successful, hi net worth senior citizen who is not just looking for an annuity and bank fixed deposits. He has been pampered as a senior executive and wants sensible products. The banking system has not recognised that the 59 year old is different from the 69, 79, 89 or 99 year old. Very, very different. Try filling in this need.

Oh, Retirement as we know is dead. Or dying. At present many 60 year olds are looking after their 90 year old parents..silently wondering who will look after them when they are 90…..well we are a ‘Do it yourself’ generation, so go and learn!! God bless.