Your New Exit Strategy

Increasingly, the concept of retirement has become something mythological akin to Bigfoot sightings or the existence of aliens. But we'd argue that with smart planning (and some sacrifices), you won't have to spend your back 9 chained to a desk.

- KIERAN LEGG

There was a time when retirement was the logical endpoint of even the most middling career. One day, you would be set free with a cake, a handshake and ambitious plans of mastering woodworking in your golden years. (Or copious amounts of day drinking and playing bridge.) But stagnant salaries and hyperinflation have quickly gutted this once forgone conclusion, leading to new generations joking bitterly about the concept of retirement rather than planning for it. One-third of millennials believe they'll never “fully” retire and that sentiment is being shared in greater numbers by newer generations. Factor in the findings of a recent Sanlam report, where it was revealed that the average retirement age in SA is no longer 60 or 65, but 80, and the whole thing starts to feel like an ironically “retired” concept.

“It’s not surprising that people feel this way,” says Ruvan Grobler, the Head Risk/Wealth manager at Bovest Wealth Management, citing the rapidly rising cost of living and the country’s always-in-vogue economic uncertainty. However, he says there's more at play than just the alarming stats wheeling by on 24-hour news chirons. We've started living longer... a lot longer. In the 1950s, if you made it to 46 before keeling over, you were right on the median for life expectancy. Now, globally, people are living to 73.2 years on average. And while living longer doesn't exactly balance out skyrocketing property costs or the damage the avo-on-toast you bought last year has done to your financial future, the new age has heralded in near-infinite opportunities to grow wealth.