Life after retirement

By EUGENE MAHALINGAM
eugenicz@thestar.com.my

RETIREMENT. To many people, it refers to the period in life where one should be kicking back, relaxing and catching up on the things they never could during their long, gruelling working lives.

Realistically, however, not many people get a chance to enjoy their retirement period, usually due to financial constraints that comes once we stop earning a living.

With the rising cost of living, many retirees are finding it difficult to make ends meet with their EPF (Employees Provident Fund) savings or pension scheme alone and are forced to continue working.

For the purpose of this article, we’re going to skip that group of people who, during their working lives, were prudent with their expenses and shrewd with their investments and are now laughing themselves all the way to the bank till the day they die.

For those who still need to earn a living post retirement, embarking on a job can still be fun and need not be a burden. In fact, many of today’s retirees view retirement not as an end, but instead as a new and exciting phase in their lives.

Work from home

For a retiree, working from home has its advantages, says Janice Tam, a retired school teacher.
“You can work at your own pace and avoid the hassle of travelling to and fro to an actual office,” she says.
Tam today provides tuition classes for kids below 12 years of age.

“Providing tuition classes is a very popular side income alternative. Baby sitting is also a good post retirement job choice, especially when the parents drop the child at your place and saves you the hassle of having to go to their home.”

Starting your own business

Many a times, the experiences of a long career can provide retirees with the confidence and knowledge to launch a successful business.

G. Murthy used to serve with the armed forces and now, at 57, is heading his own security firm.

“My experience with the armed forces allowed me to gain invaluable knowledge in self defence and now it not only allows me to help protect people, it also provides me with a decent income.”

Sometimes, the knowledge and experience could be gained from a family business.
Growing up, Rashid Abu Bakar, now 67, used to enjoy the nasi lemak his mum sold to the local village-folk to earn a living.

After serving with the Government, he is now retired and is continuing the family business and claims that it is “good pocket money.”

“It makes for a good side income on top of the pension that I get every month.”
Rashid says he enjoys eating the nasi lemak just as much as he does making them.

“As it’s important to find pleasure in what you do, or else it would just become a burden. I have to wake up very early in the morning to prepare the food but it is something that I enjoy doing.”

He adds that it is important to understand the demands and dynamics of running your own business, its prospects and needs.

Become a consultant

Many people retire from their jobs only to become consultants to their previous employers or advisors to organisations within the industry.

Says Alvin Loh, 63, an advisor to a local property developer: “Consult-ing provides you with a lot of flexibility and due to the person’s invaluable years of experience, demand for such jobs are good and so is the salary.”

Go back to school

It is not uncommon for senior citizens to enrol part time or even full time at a college or university to learn a new skill and take up a new job, says Kajang-based private college tutor Rashid Ali.

“There are many senior citizens where I teach who are taking up something new. Some of them even come back to do another course!”

Rashid admits that taking up a part-time diploma or degree can be a huge sacrifice for someone who is married.

“There are many private institutes that offer night-time or weekend courses to cater to this group of people. There are many genuine courses that one can do online.

“Having an extra qualification on your resume carries a lot of weight and if it means better job and salary prospects, it’s worth it,” says Rashid.

Become a volunteer

There are many organisations out there that are eager to accept volunteers, regardless of a person’s age, says Jacob Wong, a committee chairman for a Kepong-based non-profit organisation.

“Because we have to constantly keep our budgets down, we’re always looking for volunteers. Believe it or not, a lot of times we prefer to work with retirees because they are less demanding and are quite satisfied with the pocket money that we give them.

“Many of today’s youths are just interested in making money and are not interested with volunteering. That’s why we prefer to work with senior citizens,” he says.

Schools, libraries, religious and relief centres and charitable organisations are among some of the places that are always on the look out for volunteers, Wong adds.

Action and reaction

Behind The Headlines
Bunn Nagara

The continued rise of China takes several turns, with each one prompting revealing reactions abroad.

CHINA’S economic ascendancy is already old hat, stunning as the curve still is. But what is particularly compelling is its international fallout.

How do others react to China’s soaring trajectory? A glimpse was available during the week, when GDP figures for the second quarter surpassed Japan’s to make China the second-biggest economy in the world.

China’s number two status had been known for weeks already and previously its GDP had also overtaken Japan’s temporarily. However, as Japan continues to stagnate and China to grow, the gap between them is now expected to stay in China’s favour, making 2010 the year it becomes the world’s second-biggest economy after the United States.

Japan gave up its title as number two after 42 years in resigned acceptance.

 

Economic powerhouse: A child playing at a sculpture of a laptop computer merged with an abacus as its monitor in Shanghai on Friday. China has overtaken Japan to become the second-biggest economy in the world. — AP

 

Academically, this was a foregone conclusion, since both China’s growth and Japan’s stagnation – notwithstanding a brief respite in the first quarter this year – had been evident for years.

Popularly, a sense of lethargy seems pervasive, with little imagination or hope of how to turn things around.
Politically, attention is focused on managing consumption, subsidies and production incentives rather than challenging China.

Japanese businesses could hardly be more bullish on a booming China, particularly when they have been investing so much for so many years there.

Increasingly, Japanese industrialists are acutely aware of the potential of the world’s biggest production house and the most extensive market just next door.

The same sentiments are shared in Taiwan, if anything more so. Official notice of China eclipsing Japan economically came in the same week as approval in Taiwan’s legislature for a landmark Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement (ECFA) slashing tariffs across the Taiwan Straits.

This was a moment, enabled by a Kuomintang majority in the Legislative Yuan, that Taiwanese businesses had been waiting for.

Bilateral trade across the straits, already at US$110bil (RM346bil) annually, is set to multiply much more.
The opposition Democratic Progressive Party tried to block passage of the deal by warning that it would mean excessive dependence on the mainland, to no avail.

Their mistake was in seeing the ECFA as facilitating this dependence, when it is only a symptom of it.
The ECFA includes a host of features for mutual consultation, review and fine-tuning that will enhance and enrich cross-straits relations.

By encouraging Taiwanese businesses to explore and profit from dealings on the mainland, Taiwan’s business community as a whole would soon be convinced of improving bilateral ties all-round.

All of this might seem to prod the United States into self-doubt in the region.
Its decades-old bilateral relations with Japan as “the most important bilateral relationship across the Pacific” had just been eclipsed by its relationship with China.

Now that China’s rising economy has driven the point home by eclipsing Japan’s, what next?

Whither the 1951/60 US-Japan security treaty? And with cross-straits relations swirling into a new configuration, what would happen to the US “security understanding” with Taiwan enshrined in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act and all its nuances?

A rising China is not doing anything significant to upstage US military dominance of East Asia but some militarists see its hulking economy to be making waves nonetheless.

But in being militarists, they have no proper response to developments in the economic realm.
The day after Taiwan’s legislature passed the ECFA convincingly, Adm Robert Willard, head of the US Pacific Command, said in Manila that the United States opposed the use of force in South China Sea disputes.

This followed comments by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month that the United States had a “national interest” in seeing the disputes resolved diplomatically, upsetting China.

The problem was not over disputes having to be resolved diplomatically but about the United States seeing itself as having a national interest in the region.

It could mean that US forces would intervene to defend those perceived interests whenever it deemed appropriate.
That came after officials in Beijing reportedly told a visiting US delegation in March that the South China Sea was a “core national interest” of China.

How far would the United States want to pit itself against China in the region and for how long would the United States want any such conflict to last?

Adm Willard’s talking points were neither new nor ever disputed by any country in the region. But why they were made at the time could bear some examination, particularly when he added that countries in South-East Asia were concerned with China’s military assertiveness.

This outlook contradicts many perceptions in the region, as have been communicated to the latest Pentagon survey.

Its current annual report to Congress, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2010, cites China’s military build-up continuing “unabated” but also acknowledges its ability to sustain military power at a distance “remains limited”.

At the same time, US military exercises in the region amount to overt posturing in playing to a Beijing audience.

The more hawkish media in the United States and East Asia then pick up on these events and spin them through their respective prisms.

More of the same can be expected when China’s PLA Navy begins work on its first aircraft carrier later this year.

Other countries in East Asia are unlike the United States not only in terms of size and strength but also in simply being here – which means they cannot end a regional conflict by simply withdrawing troops.

China’s rising economy need not provoke a military face-off with anyone but could instead foster closer ties as Japan and Taiwan have found.

Economic pre-eminence should not have to trigger a military response, least of all the kind of military intervention proven disastrous elsewhere.

Car loan takers top bankruptcy list

By LEE YUK PENG
yukpeng@thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: At least 500 people who take out hire-purchase loans for vehicles are declared bankrupt every month.

The majority, comprising 37% (950) of the 2,565 cases in the first five months of this year, were aged between 35 and 44 years. (See Table)

Insolvency Department director-general Datuk Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil told The Star the incidence of bankruptcy from unserviced car loans was extremely high in the first five months of the year, an average of 513 cases a month.

He said this was in contrast to the average of 330 cases a month last year, 227 in 2008 and 265 in 2007.

He added that becoming bankrupt because of one’s inability to service vehicle loans had also topped the list of bankruptcy cases in Malaysia, accounting for about 24% of the total 80,370 cases between 2005 and May this year.

“Personal loan borrowers and business loan borrowers accounted for 12% and 11% of the total number of bankruptcy cases respectively within the same period.”

Once a person is declared a bankrupt he will be restricted from, among others, travelling overseas, holding the post of company director, and will have to give up his assets, including property and cars.

He must contribute to the bankruptcy estate, and will only be discharged once the sum owed is settled.

Abdul Karim is concerned that the number of bankruptcy cases involving car loans among those aged below 25 had shot up to 156 last year, against 55 cases each in 2008 and 2007.

There were 27 such cases as at May this year.
Under the hire purchase agreement, the bank repossesses the car if the borrower defaults on the monthly instalments for three consecutive months.

It will sell off the car to recover the sum owed and if the amount still owed is more than RM30,000 the bank will file a bankruptcy petition in the High Court.

In cases where the sum owed is below RM30,000, the bank will wait until the amount, with accumulated interest, balloons to RM30,000 before filing the petition.

On the rising incidence of bankruptcy involving those taking car loans, Fomca claims there is a reason why banks prefer to repossess and sell the cars instead of negotiating with the borrowers to come up with a scheduled repayment that they could afford.

According to its secretary-general Mohd Sha’ani Abdullah, some bank officers receive kickbacks from car repossessors and auctioneers for giving them business.

He said Fomca had complained to Bank Negara on the zero downpayment for car loans as advertised by some car salesmen last year: “How can this be allowed when borrowers have to pay at least 10% of the price as downpayment?”