Entering my 7th decade of life, the decade universally known as the decade of retirement!
After a lifetime of work, people “retire” from formal work sometime in their sixties. I am now also entering that decade of my life, but please don’t ask me when I am planning to retire, it is not soon. I still have too much to do…after six decades of learning, doing, experiencing, and sharing I still have more to learn, more to do, more to experience, and more importantly, more to share!
On this platform, I will be sharing my knowledge, experience, research, and reading material with you to assist you on your journey to, through, and after retirement. The intention is not to dispense advice, but rather to enlighten readers and equip them to make informed “retirement” decisions…before, at, and during retirement. And hopefully, facilitate constructive conversation and debate!
Please allow me to introduce myself. I was born on the 26th of May 1963 in a working-class family.
The ’60s were tumultuous, it was marked by the civil rights movement, anti-war protests, the counterculture movement, and Woodstock, inter alia. At the heart of the counterculture movement, three things mattered: the search for authenticity, an insistence upon individualism, and a desire for community. Although still very young, this era and its music, at least some of it, imprinted on me till this day.
I finished high school in the early eighties and attended university, obtaining a degree in commerce and teaching. Once a teacher, always a teacher – I still enjoy sharing my knowledge and experience (teaching). Following a short career in the front of a classroom, I decided to follow my passion…
This passion was born when during my final year at school for a class outing, we visited 17 Diagonal Street. What we witnessed fascinated me and primarily determined my professional future. Observing from the public gallery a crowd of men looking at a big board…shouting, screaming, waving their arms in total “chaos” …concluding multimillion Rand deals amongst each other on behalf of their clients on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
I knew then that one day I wanted to have a part of this.
Awaiting in a queue my turn to register for a BA degree with majors in Afrikaans and English at university, I…on the spur of the moment, with a little voice telling me people with degrees in languages don’t become stockbrokers, walked away to seek the registration queue for commerce degrees. With a bursary to study languages approved, I was taking a big gamble…
My bursary sponsor (fortunately) agreed to the change of field of study… ex-post and with my study cost covered I enjoyed being a student…learning!
While teaching accounts during school hours and coaching sports I attended night classes to complete my honors degree in investment management. …on my way to my dream.
Stockbroking wasn’t to be for me at this time. Unfortunately, stockbroking firms were not keen to employ inexperienced staff after the dramatic Black Monday market collapse of October 1987, irrespective of their passion for investment markets and relevant qualifications.
The next best thing was then to settle for a job in banking as a trainee money market trader. Not stockbroking, but a step into the high-octane life of the financial markets. This led to a stint as a capital market trader at a time when the Eskom E168 bond was the benchmark bond of the South African capital market – can you believe this?
The late 1980s and the best part of the 90ties were known for the political metamorphosis taking place in South Africa and the impact thereof on investment markets. For this period, the excitement was in the forex markets. I was fortunate to be transferred to the forex trading desk…it was wild… trading a two-tier Rand, the Deutsche Mark, and many other European currencies.
During my period as a currency trader, there were many adrenalin-pumping events…George Soros pushed the Great British Pound out of the European Rate Mechanism in 1992, the first democratic elections in South Africa in April 1994, Nick Leeson’s collapse of Barings Bank in 1995, the abolishment of the Financial Rand in March 1995, and many more.
My newly wedded wife also forced me to complete my Master’s degree in 1995 before I was allowed to watch any Rugby World Cup games…I submitted my thesis on currency hedging the morning South Africa played Australia in the opening match and watched the game from behind my dealing desk. We all know how this panned out…
The sophistication of the market grew in leaps and bounds as we developed new products and strategies – building our derivative pricing models on Microsoft Excel from textbook formulas. A continuous steep learning curve!
After almost a decade as a forex dealer, I reached a point in my career where I felt it was time to move on and joined a large trust company, overseeing their investment portfolios. As luck would have it, this career change took place amid the financial market collapse triggered by the Asian Debt crisis. The JSE All Share Index plunged 39.0% from 30 April 1998 to 31 August 1998 – short and sharp. What a way to start a new career phase where the major responsibility was managing equity and fixed-interest portfolios…not the more familiar currencies. Call it bad timing…never in my life was the learning curve steeper…
This crisis settled me well in my new environment, at least that was what I thought…until I was approached by the stockbroking arm of one of the big banks in the country to join them and manage their private client stockbroking arm.
A stockbroker! I did not hesitate to grab this opportunity.
To enhance my practical experience gained I started studying towards my CFA Charter, which I obtained after three years of hectic studies, a new job as a stockbroker, completing the Johannesburg Stock Exchange Membership Exams, working insane hours, and starting a family…this period of my life is a blur in my mind, like a photograph you can remember well but it is not in focus.
My transition to a stockbroker followed revolutionary changes on the exchange since my schoolboy visit and previous unsuccessful job interviews, the chaos of open outcry came to an end in June 1996 – replaced by technology – electronic trading. A 108-year tradition is gone! Soon the squad of motorcycle delivery men rushing around the City of Gold once a week to deliver paper share certificates to settle concluded transactions was to also disappear…to be replaced by electronic share certificates and electronic settlement.
Following my time as a stockbroker was several years spent structuring large trade finance deals for a major bank in Johannesburg. Traveling to many wonderful places globally, with many adventures, especially in Africa!
The next big market contraction was the Global Financial Crisis – during this drawdown, the local equity market contracted by 40.4% from 31 May 2008 to 28 February 2009. Coincidence…I am not sure, but this financial market crisis occurred at the time when I decided to call an end to an exciting rich corporate career as financial market trader, investment manager, and investment banker. My new mission was to apply my extensive knowledge and experience in the financial markets and portfolio management, assisting people to live and retire financially independently.
It has been 15 years now!
Over the years I have applied my expertise and knowledge, assisting people to become financially independent and retire with sustainable retirement plans.
However, the internal student in me has been questioning the standard practice applied in RETIREMENT PLANNING. Search the term and you will soon realise that the focus of “retirement planning” is almost entirely on the financial aspects thereof. Is this what retirement planning is about: how much capital do I need, what should I invest in, what investment returns can I expect, what are the associated risks, how much income can I withdraw, how long will my capital last…?
These topics and many more are well-researched and still being researched in the fields of finance and investment with the optimum solution still elusive. Make no mistake, financial security (or, as I call it: being financially fit) throughout life is important, even more so when one chooses to permanently leave the workforce behind…ceasing to receive a regular monthly income, having to rely on retirement provisions for a regular income.
From extensive reading of academic research on this topic and my personal experience, assisting people to be financially fit and entering the decade of retirement myself, it became evident to me that there is more to this than just being financially fit. Over the years I have developed the principle of the “three-legged chair”, and I am continuing my studies with the ambition to develop a research proposal that can lead to more focused research on the topic of RETIREMENT PLANNING.
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