Retirement Questions ...

Tuesday, Oct 11, 2011. Do you have an insurance for retirement? Or are you building on a state systems, which will pay you a pension when you have reached a particular age? What role does the retirement play for you?

Preparations for Retirement …

When we look into different countries, there are very different systems in place to care for pensions and retirement schemes. They all have difficulties and advantages.

Some states rely on a contract between the generations. The current younger generation needs to care for the older generation. The system uses money, of course. We pay money into the state retirement funds, and it takes it and uses it to care for the pensioners. The generation contract means that the money is spent right away, for todays pensioners, not for us later.

In contrast to the generation contract a savings based system tries to collect funds for later, i.e. everyone is building some fond which can be used for him or her when she is old. Both systems have difficulties when there are more old people than young people, the ratio between them is of course a crucial variable in the whole game. Today, often it is said we need to collect more funds to prepare our retirement, since this ratio changes. But it will not help much, since even if we have more money, there are only limited ressources in terms of the workforce, and the value of our money will decrease proportionally. So if just everyone saves more, that will not help us at all!

What to Prepare …

We need to have a different view on the whole retirement question. We need to look at it from the Lords viewpoint. He tells us not to have too many sorrows. He tells us that we should rather collect value into his kingdom, not for other things. He promises that when we care for his things, then everything else will turn our to be fine for us. That is quite a far reaching promise!

My understanding of the New Testament in these matters is rather practical. I think that of course Jesus tells us to care for one another - and that also means to think about a good retirement systems, such that everyone has enough to live. But also we need to manage our own expectations in relation to those of others and the possibilties. That basically means that we cannot expect to keep current retirement ages in aging societies. Everyone who can will have to work and will have to contribute to the social development, even when he is older than the classical retirement age. The way we carry out our work will need to change as well. There need to be solutions between 0% and 100% of work - and there need to be solutions which fit all ages and all family situations.

To put his kingdom first means to know that our life is just borrowed from him, that it belongs to the Lord. It means to think about good systems which support every human in our country and beyond. And it means to trust in him and his support, his guidance and love in our life now and every day to come. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts