The Pension Blueprint podcast video transcript 

Episode 11: When is the right time to retire?

Celine Chiovitti: Hi, everyone. It's time for another episode of The Pension Blueprint. I'm one of your hosts, Celine Chiovitti, Chief Pension Officer at OMERS. And this week, we're asking a question that is probably one of the most frequently asked questions I get. When is the right time to retire?

This is actually a very personal question as everyone's situation is going to be different. However, one thing you've heard throughout this season is that our retirement years are changing dramatically, and that's where my guests come in. This week, I'm so happy to welcome Satish Rai and Joanne Sutton to the show.

Although he's now retired from full-time employment, Satish is still a Senior Advisor at OMERS. He was previously our Chief Investment Officer. And prior to joining OMERS, he was the Chief Investment Officer at TD Asset Management.

Joanne is a retired OMERS member who previously worked in human resources for the County of Bruce. She's currently a Seminar Facilitator for MROO, the Municipal Retirees Organization of Ontario.

And honestly, as you'll hear in the conversation, both Joanne and Satish are involved in so much more than what's on their professional bios. They are real life example of what redefining retirement looks like. So, let's hear what they have to say about figuring out the right time to retire.

So, hello there. I'm so excited to be having a conversation about how we can reimagine retirement. Happy to have you here, Joanne Sutton and Satish Rai. And before we get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about your own journey and your connection to this topic and your connection with OMERS? I'll start with you, Joanne.

Joanne Sutton: Okay. Thank you, Celine. I retired in 2018 after 26 years in the Human Resources Department with Bruce County. And interestingly, I hadn't thought about working in retirement, but the opportunity presented itself as I was working towards retirement to do some facilitation with the Municipal Retirees Organization of Ontario. So I, for the last six years, have been facilitating retirement planning seminars for OMERS employers.

Celine Chiovitti: That's great. MROO is one of our greatest sponsors. We're very close with them so thank you for the work that you do there. It's a pleasure. Satish.

Satish Rai: You know, a hundred years ago, we used to think of retirement with, you used to die with your boots on, meaning you worked till you died. And then during the Industrial Revolution, you might have gone home for the last one or two years of your life because you're too sick to work. Today, you're expected to live 30 years after retirement. And so from my point of view, I don't actually think about retirement as an end, I actually think about the next journey. And I've always thought about the next 30 years of my life broke down in three areas.

The first is really work, but a different format than I have in the past. Second is how can I get back to society? And that's some of the charitable work that I do. And the third is how can I really enjoy myself on the fun factor? So, I've thought about over the next 10, 20 years, well in my seventies, I expect to keep working but at much reduced pace than in the last 40 years, but supplement that with some other really passion projects that I have.

Celine Chiovitti: That's great. So, do you think that the actual concept of retirement is outdated?

Satish Rai: I think because we're going to live 30 years past retirement, it's important to find something that really you find passionate about. You have to maximize earnings. But I do find, if you could find passion, and I use this word, give yourself permission to reinvent yourself and be kind to yourself. And I think people spend so much energy saying, I've retired and I've stopped, and they don't give themselves permission. And somebody goes, well, this job doesn't pay as much as it did or this and that. So I actually think there's a really great opportunity to reinvent yourself. And so whether, I don't use the word retirement at all, I just think I've transitioned into a different role, different part of my life. And this part will be 10 to 20 years and I might do something else in, you know, my eighties.
Celine Chiovitti: That's so great. Yeah, I think when you're, like, you just really touched the point of we're living so much longer than we have in the past. So outside of, you know, there's the financial aspects of if you're no longer working full time and you're doing something else, or you're not working, you have to be able to afford that lifestyle, and in some cases, for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And so that's sort of the magic of the pension promise. And so we know that for OMERS members, they have access to that income for life. And so they can, you know, tick that box. What else is there? What are the non-financial aspects of getting ready for retirement?

Joanne Sutton: I think one would be your level of satisfaction or happiness at work. Because mandatory retirement is long gone, and a date on a piece of paper or your birth certificate doesn't mean you have to retire so, I think that's much more fluid than it used to be. And I think the opportunity, as has been mentioned, to reinvent yourself, take some time to think, in addition to the financial, what do you want your life to be in the next chapter? And I think sometimes people don't pay enough attention to that as they prepare to take that next step. Really think about what do you want to do with your life? What are the elements of the work that you've been doing that you might want to use to transition into another career even, or just some volunteer work that uses those skills that you have enjoyed using throughout your working career.

Celine Chiovitti: So, Satish, how about you? What do you think about when you're preparing for retirement? What are those non-financial things that you would think about?

Satish Rai: Well, you know, first of all, I really believe we have to start thinking retirement many, many years before it actually happens and so the day that you actually, quote, retire, it's not a shock. And I think about a smooth off ramp that takes place. So, if you can have the conversations with your partners five, six, seven years prior. What are your hobbies? What are your interests? What are you willing to do? And actually start teasing out some of those things well before retirement, I think the off ramp becomes much smoother.

Celine Chiovitti: I think that's brilliant. I think it's like waking up one day and expecting to have this different life, I would imagine, is difficult.

Satish Rai: And then for in my next chapter, like I said, I actually continue to work for the next 10, 20 years, but I'm really passionate about food security, so I've joined Second Harvest, and then for the family side, I have family, friends, fitness, and fun. And I actually think about those concepts.

Celine Chiovitti: Four F's.

Satish Rai: Yeah, for instance, I've not allocated as much time as I wanted to my physical abilities. And so I've been constantly thinking about those things. So, I actually break down my activities, if that's the right terminology. One-third about working, one-third about social giving back, which provides me incredible amount of gratitude, and then one-third about family, friends, fitness, and fun. And so that's a combination that seems to work for me.

Celine Chiovitti: Has that evolved over the years? Like, the amount of time you spend in the different buckets?

Satish Rai: Yeah, for sure. Because what I thought I wanted to do 10 years ago I may not want to do today, but the buckets themselves have not changed, but the percentage of allocation time. And even today, there'll be a long period of time where I'm spending all my time in work. There'll be a long period of time where I'm spending a lot of time on charity. So it doesn't, it's not one-third every week, but on average for the year, it works out to be one-third, one-third, one-third.

Celine Chiovitti: You know, there's so much research coming out, and I know the National Institute on Ageing did a paper about loneliness in retirement and the importance of social connections. And unless you invest in them early on, sometimes we're so busy working, working, working, that you actually don't think about what else do I want to do? Because I'm just so busy thinking about the day to day. But I think the way you've sort of outlined it, family, fun, family, fitness, fun, friends. I said it out of order, but the four F's. And so, if we can all start thinking about that early on and then just saying, how are we going to build those connections and think about what we want to do later in life.

Joanne Sutton: And I think that's particularly true with social connections if in your working career, you've had a lot of good close friendships with colleagues because the day comes when you retire and those, it's not that you'll never see those people anymore, but the reality is it's probably going to be on you to maintain those friendships because they're busy working. So, I think you need to spend some time and think about social connections. And if you don't have a lot of social connections outside of work, then how can you develop those? Because without social connections, even if you are an introvert, as I am, you're not going to be very successful because we have to be connected socially in order to be successful and happy.

Celine Chiovitti: It's so important, it's so important that, and I would say again, the purpose-driven sort of mental stimulation, how do we kind of keep doing something when we spent our lives doing something.

Satish Rai: So, something else that I've seen researched is that some of the hobbies you had as a child resurface in your retirement. So don't discard some of the hobbies that really excited you as a, you know, as a teenager. You may recall, I used to play competitive chess. So I've started taking that up again. And it provides me, you wouldn't believe how much excitement I get today playing chess again after 50 years.

Celine Chiovitti: Because you probably haven't had a lot of time in the past five, 10 years--

Satish Rai: Well, 40 years, I haven't really played. And I was very good at it. And so that actually brings me enormous amount of joy. And I started playing the saxophone again, something I haven't done as a child. So, there are other things besides just working that you can get from your childhood, which provides a lot of joy.

Celine Chiovitti: Yeah. So ask yourself, what brings you joy? What did you used to do when you played? Play is so important and we don't think about it often as we get older.

Joanne Sutton: And even the skills that you used early in life versus later in life. My dad retired as the Vice President of a distillery. He started life as an apprentice to become a Blacksmith, and he went back to it in retirement. And he returned to that love, and was very creative and had, you know, a wonderful retirement by returning to something that he loved in his younger years.

Celine Chiovitti: Joanne, what do you tell people in their first year of retirement who are struggling a little bit, trying to get used to the new normal?

Joanne Sutton: There's a couple of things that I will say to people. One is a piece of advice that I chose to do when I retired, which was, I made myself a promise that I wouldn't take on anything new in the first year, that I would sit with retirement, I would keep the things that I already had, the volunteer commitments, et cetera. I wasn't going to add anything until I had really lived with retirement so that I could see how much of my time I wanted to give up. I saw other people who retired and had people come out of the woodwork and saying, oh, you're retired. You have time, you can do this. And the next thing you know, they're over committed and not very happy.

So, I think it's really important to transition, and I think it's also important to understand that there is a period of what I would call “decompression” when you retire. Whether you have knowingly had a very stressful job, or whether you thought it was pretty easy, all those decades of work are going to take some time to come out of your system. And you have to give yourself permission to relax and do nothing. Do too much nothing, and you'll get sick of it and you'll find something to do. But I really think it is important to give yourself that permission to relax, work through it, and then you'll see where you want to go, what you want to devote your time to.

Celine Chiovitti: I'm going to change trajectories for a minute here. So, we're talking a little bit about the non-financial planning. But the financial aspect is really, really important. And, you know, we know our members have access to a pension, which is phenomenal, but 60% of Canadians don't have access to a pension. And even our members might want to supplement their pension. And that's done, you know, usually early on.

So, I want to talk a little bit about a book that you wrote, Satish, called "Lessons Learned: Wisdom from 40 Years of Investing." I've read it, I think it's really, really great information, and it's very readable, which I think is important. Tell us a little bit about why you wrote it, what you wanted to get out of it. Tell us a little bit about the book.

Satish Rai: So, there's two things. First of all, there's lots of investment books that are out there, but most of them, quite frankly, are too difficult for the average Canadian to read and absorb. They're 3, 4, 500 pages, and they're very thick and nobody really absorbs it. So, I've been fortunate enough in my career to have presented to hundreds of thousands of Canadians. But the same questions, same comments, have come up over and over again. And so I wanted to write a book that was available in a way that 95% of Canadians could absorb in a very simple methodology.

So, I wrote a picture book of all the mistakes that I've made and translated them into lessons learned of how people can think about their own personal finance. It's a financial literacy book, and it's a picture book. It's one topic per page, very easy to read. And I find that the investment industry has become so complicated, so riddled with jargon, that we've actually forgotten first principles. And so this was really to go back to first principles. And these are lessons, mistakes that I've made. And what did I learn from those lessons and how did I evolve?

So, the best audience here is, a parent who's sitting down with their teenage child to have this conversation. And each lesson is a minute, so it's not very heavy. So this was my way of giving back, and this is one of the actions that I have in my post-OMERS days to really think about this.

And the way I've done this book is all the content is available free online. The print version costs money because you have to print, and then a hundred per cent of profits or speaking fees go back to charity. So this was not about making money, this was a way to maximize the widest distribution possible and to see if we can affect change for certain parts of people's thinking.

Celine Chiovitti: I think that's amazing. Again, I think it's really, really well-written. I love the way you explain it too, you know, sometimes, consuming information about finances is overwhelming. And so I think the more that we can do to help educate people wherever they are on their path to make some steps, is a great approach. And I love the way you've sort of tied it into this as sort of your element of giving back and purpose. And I do think, again, going back to sort of the how do you evolve and change the way we're thinking, reframing retirement.

You know, you've got someone who's had such a successful career investing, now sharing wisdom and support to community. And we've seen that, you know, even if you kind of look across the world, Japan and other areas, it's how do you turn into mentorship, and really being able to share that wisdom with sort of the next generation of people. So, thank you. That's really great.

For individuals who actually don't, aren't quite ready to retire, but let's say they're sort of, they're in their fifties or in their sixties, they're not ready to leave the workforce. Do you think that there are biases that exist within an employee, like within the employer workforce? Do you think that there's things that we need to do to get people to feel more accepted to stay in the workforce? Has anyone ever come to you with that, Joanne?

Joanne Sutton: Not that I can think of. And I feel like things are starting to shift a little bit more now, particularly post-pandemic, because we've seen the great shortages of labor, of people to do a wide variety of jobs. So, I think the employer mindset is starting to shift towards, well, we've got someone here that has good skills, maybe we should think about encouraging them to stay if they'd like to, as opposed to, when are you retiring? Can we have a date? We need to know so we can replace you. I think that is starting to shift a little bit. It's still there, that bias is still there. And I think, in general, that the mindset is changing.

There's a great sign I saw a few weeks ago that said, it's weird being the same age as old people because you're there, but you don't feel it. And I think things are starting to shift. But it's a very slow process.

Celine Chiovitti: Yeah. It's funny, I was at a wedding a few months ago and all of the kids were dancing and we were, I'm like, we are now the people that aren't the ones on the dance floor. We're sitting here chatting. And so it's interesting to sort of see how your life trajectory evolves. How about you, Satish? How have things evolved throughout your career?

Satish Rai: Well, first of all, I've been very fortunate to always have an opportunity to learn a new thing. I've had various roles for the last 30, 40 years, but each one of those roles allowed me to meet new people, to make new networks, but also learn new skills. And so from my point of view, I hope that continues for the next 10, 20 years. And I use this terminology, is that people feel obliged to retire, and they think that's a measure of success.

I've worked 30 years, 35 years, and I would actually ask people to open up themselves and say, it's actually okay to keep working, and it's not a bad thing. And society is almost saying that if you have to work and you're 65, even if you're financially secure, that that's a negative.

I actually think, as been gone before, it builds a social network, and there's other benefits around that. I've used this concept that if you can continue to learn for whatever thing you're doing, even in your retirement, even this financial, non-financial, whatever that you have, your mindset will be more open to other ideas. You'll have more joy, you'll have more love, and you'll have many other aspects that round out who you are.

So, the first thing is give yourself the permission to explore. Once you give yourself the permission and not listen to everybody else, say, you know, you should retire, you know, go to the beach, you know, those kind of things, I think it opens up a whole world for you.

Celine Chiovitti: Yeah. That's great. So, I want to ask both of you what tip you would give a 30-year-old, a 40-year-old, a 50-year-old who is thinking about their future retirement?

Joanne Sutton: Well, first and foremost, I think for any decade, it's never too early to start thinking about it. And I know that's really hard for people in their thirties and even forties to hear, oh, you know, I'm ages away from that. But by the time they come to a retirement planning seminar, they're saying, oh, I wish I'd started 10, 15 years ago. So, it's never too early to start thinking about it, particularly on the financial end, but also understanding what your skills, what brings you pleasure so that you can start building the bank of financial security, but also the bank of the stuff you're going to pull out and explore when you retire.

Celine Chiovitti: Yeah. That's great. Thank you, Joanne.

Satish Rai: You know, on the financial side, it's very clear, it's simple math, the earlier you start saving, it's exponentially benefit to you. So, if you save $200 when you're 20 years old, you'll have to start saving a thousand dollars in your thirties, you have to save $10,000 in your forties, you know, $50,000 in your... so the earlier you can save a little bit of money, it's exponential benefit to you.

The second comment, which is I strongly believe, is building on what you just said, is build your network of activities and people as wide as possible. And if you keep doing that, your network becomes bigger and bigger, and you can learn what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy. So, keep learning, keep building your network. And for a financial side, start really, really early.

Celine Chiovitti: That's great. Thank you both. I really, really appreciated the conversation. I know that our listeners will be very intrigued to hear what you both have to say.

Satish Rai: Thank you so much.

Joanne Sutton: Appreciate the opportunity.