 On behalf of the East Caribbean Central Bank, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the first in the three-part series on retirement planning. This concept first came into being during October of 2017 when ECCB during the Financial Information Month had retirement planning as their theme. They have since decided to partner with the NTN to bring you the three-part series. So today we have with me three gentlemen who would give us some more insights on that information. We will be looking at preparing for retirement, we will look at organizational responsibilities, the personal and psychological aspect of retirement, the all-important life after retirement which would require lifestyle changes and the transitioning the idea, some of us may decide to go into business so we have someone here who would enlighten us on this and also the all-important concurrent affairs associated with retirement. So hopefully at the end of this session we would have covered all of these areas and provided some insights. And with me are Mr. Elijah Williams, director of Vibradio, I also have Mr. Egbert Senchis and an economist with the Ministry of Finance and who is on poor retirement leave. He is transitioning into retirement so we would get some insights from him. And I also have with me Mr. Egbert Stevens who is a business development officer with the Business Development Center formerly CEDU. So gentlemen welcome. Okay so we will begin with the gentleman who is transitioning. You in the process of, I mean what has been the thought process to get you to where you are now? What has been the thought process? What are the things that sort of kept you up at night? So for me life begins at retirement and I say so because as most persons would be aware in the public service the retirement age is 55 and I think most people would agree that 55 years is relatively young, it's a relatively young age to want to retire. So I think as part of the preparation for retirement for me personally I prepared myself for it by upgrading my skills and by putting together a number of things to allow me to retire and to take on a new life basically after retirement. So for example I'm an economist so I would have much experience in advising the government on various economic policy matters. So I would have taken the opportunity to upgrade my skills in various areas so that after retirement I can go into consultancy, I can go into business or even take on a new role in a different capacity. So all of those plans and I decided about three years before retirement. So during that three year period I had sufficient time to put my thought together in terms of what exactly I would like to do after retirement and to ensure that I'm ready. You answered my follow-up question, would it mean how long did you begin that process? And now that you've said it started three years ago do you think that three years is sufficient? Well for me personally I think it is, for some persons it depends on the circumstances it may not be sufficient time but for me given where I am at this point in time I think that was sufficient time because one of the things I really want to do is to perform at a higher level, at an international level because I've worked in solution most of the time and also at ECCB in St. Ketsos as well. But I would like to work at an international level so I've upgraded my skills to allow me to do that and I'm in transition to doing that. And I also want to do some level of consultancy whether it's international or abroad and I've equipped myself to allow me to do it as well. I also plan to do some voluntary work because I think that after being in the system in my case for almost 36 years I think it's time to give back to society and I would really like to provide an opportunity to volunteer in a different capacity to allow me to give back. So I think that is very important and to do something different, something that you enjoy at the same time you feel rewarded in giving back to society. So that's very important for me. I want to pursue that question further with either Edward or Elijah. In terms of time, I mean you from a perspective of an entrepreneur, you're a young man and you've started your own business, you in the perspective of a business development officer, you obviously advise people on a regular basis and you see people who have transitioned and who are in the transition process deciding to start their own business. What comes to you in terms of the time frame that is required to make the right decisions? Well I don't think there is a set period of time to really attribute to retirement. I think it really is the person's state of mind, the development as to what they would like to do upon retirement and I think that may be one of the burning questions that persons need to address. What do I want to do after I've left this place of employment? I mean we have businesses and economists, we have Elijah who's a business person. When it gets to that, they say ripe old age but it's not old, it's ripe age. It's not old, when someone is ripe it's not old, right? When it gets to that age where figure is okay, I don't really want to work anymore. What does he do or she, what does that individual do? When do they decide? Some persons may decide they want to retire at 50, they want to retire at 40 because in business and they don't want to do anything else. But it's really a state of mind of we as individuals preparing ourselves as to where we want to go and the how. Now as a business development officer I tell people especially when it comes to business persons, we encourage them to put something aside for your retirement. Do that even when you're source planning early and so what do you want to do, when you want to do it and prepare for it because most times persons are just confronted with a, retirement has come upon me and they have not given it any thought as to what is going to happen then. So it's really something I think that persons need to take stock of even in the middle, when they just transition from youth between 35 and 40 from since then start to plan for yourselves. What do I want to do when I retire? Do I want to become a business person? Do I want to go to the agriculture? Do I want to tour the world? Do I want to just sit back and spend time with my grandchildren or my children? What do you want to do and I think that that is the important thing. When you have decided what you want to do then now you can start planning towards it. You know I don't know if Elijah has to say that. What Elijah has to say as a young man, young entrepreneur. Let me just start off by saying to Mr. Stevens that ripe is the start of the decaying process so I don't know if you want to use ripe. But I was fortunate enough that one of my first jobs I worked at a bank and part of my training was retirement planning. I was trained to help advise clients who come in to plan for retirement. Obviously the bank had instruments that you could have purchased to use to assist you with planning for your retirement so that was the thrust of it. But I became very aware of retirement from a very young age. Egbert touched on something that I think is very critical for you to go about determining what you're going to do in terms of your retirement planning. You must first establish what do you want to do when you retire. As he indicated is it do you plan on traveling the world? Do you plan on just staying home and relaxing? Do you plan on establishing a garden in your backyard, etc. So whatever it is that you envision you doing after retirement should really guide what you do in terms of your retirement planning. I personally I don't think it's ever too soon to start retirement planning. For simple reason the sooner you start the less you have to input to get to what you want. If you start with 10 years left before you retire you actually have 10 years to put in place whatever it is that you want to establish for retirement. And I hold that thought. We take a break and we'll continue on that topic. Thanks. Pamela, I noticed that you built your retaining wall on my property. You will have to give me my land back or compensate me for that. My contractor isn't dumb. I trust that he will not build anything on your property. Where is your proof? Let's go to court. This situation does not require you to go to court. Looks like we have to go through mediation here. Mediation is a way people resolve conflicts like this. Someone, a third party, comes to speak to both parties. This person is called the mediator. The mediator is impartial. He or she makes sure that communication between both parties is effective and efficient. So the mediator is a judge? No, the mediator is not a judge. Mediators, unlike judges, do not decide cases or impose settlements. Let me get a mediator to handle this retaining wall and that kitchen. Kitchen? Yes, your kitchen also falls on my land. Let me call the mediator. Okay, Elijah, could you continue on lead point two? Yeah, I was saying, you know, it's never too soon to start. You know, the more time you give yourself, you know, you can manage in terms of what you put away into the savings, you can manage in terms of what you plan for. You can also make changes along the way. You have enough time to make changes along the way, you know, something comes up. So I, from a personal standpoint, I've been thinking of retirement from as young as 20 years old. For me, my ultimate retirement plan would have been to be self-employed, to establish a business that could go on generating revenues for me even after I decided to retire. And as I mean, you can see I'm well on the way in terms of executing that. But you know, I think it's critical to things that one, you know what you want to do when you retire and two, that you give yourself enough time so that you can plan adequately to achieve that when your retirement age comes about. One thing I like to remind people of, you know, when I speak of retirement is the cost factor. The, you're in a steady job, you have a steady income, you work with that. But when you retire, that changes. So your capacity to earn, your ability to earn in terms of what comes in on a regular basis is definitely not the same. So even if you like to contribute to NIC, and then there's a fixed amount that you will get, in most cases that may not be sufficient, especially if you've come out of a salary bracket, which is how many times that. You know, what can you do to bridge that gap, to assist you in making the transition, or maybe what sort of lifestyle changes that you may need. But also taking into consideration the fact that there will be some costs that come at you regardless. So how do you prepare, how do you plan for that? What do you do? Well, from a business development point of view, we ask persons to consider what they would like to, what's the minimum living condition that they need, right? And if you start from that minimum living condition, that on a minimum basis, if I need, well, as an arbitrary figure, $2,000 to survive on a monthly basis. We now have to start planning to put in measures in place to achieve that. And as Elijah was saying, the planning, if you do it from an early enough age, staging in your work life, it allows for any adjustments, because you know, life is not static, you have inflation, you have all different other things, you know, personnel to put things in place. It's not something that we have a blueprint for, to say it must be A, B, C, D, E, F, G. But it's some basic things that you must do, which is you must plan. You must know what you want. And by knowing what you want, then now you can plan how to get there. And I mean, even Mr. Sages, from an economic point of view, I think can shed some light as to what persons, you know, the things persons can do to assist themselves, you know, put a save in the side, look at their lifestyle, what do you want. And I mean, as early, and you do it like incrementally, I mean, for government workers, compulsory retirement age is 55. So by the time you get 50, 45, going to 50, you supposed to be putting things in place as to what you want to do, how you want to get it done, what grade you are in government service, look at the salaries, find out from the government service, what would be the income you would have achieved if you were to retire at that age, at that level. So you get, you know what's coming. And now you could put expenses in perspective. If you have mortgage to pay, whatever, if you want to go into business, what would be the cost coming? You have agencies like Small Business Weapons Center, CEDU, that you could come to, find out what it is, if I want to go into a particular kind of business, what would you require? And that way you prepare yourself, you know, and that's the basic economics of it. I would like to take off on what Mr. Stephen left off. So from a government employee perspective, one of the advantages of, well, two, actually, is that number one, the retirement age in government is fairly low, 55 I think is relatively young. And number two, working in government, you tend to get a lot of experience in various aspects of whether it's business or in the technical field. So you'd be well qualified in terms of your, not just your academic achievement, but your experience as well, because there are a lot of trade opportunities in government. So therefore, when you retire, I believe, particularly at the professional level, persons at the professional level, they have a lot of experience in terms of, you know, various options, whether they want to go into investment, whether they want to go into managing the business, whether they want to go into consultancy, whether they want to have another full-time job. So I think it gives them a broad range, as I say, particularly at the professional level, in terms of the options available to them. So I think that would equip them to, you know, to consider one of those options. And for me personally, I think, you know, operating at the professional level, it allows me to, it gives me this many, many options to go into. And I think in St. Lucia, there's a lot of scope for consultancy, because you find that a lot of the government initiatives, we have to rely on foreign consultants. And I think we have reached a stage where we need to reduce the reliance on foreign consultancies and to use the skills that are homegrown to undertake a lot of those consultancies in the government. And so that's one area which I think at the professional level that one can go into. There are a lot of opportunities to invest, increasingly our financial system, not just in St. Lucia, but within the OECS and even the wider region, it's becoming more sophisticated. So you can look at various investment options, whether it's in stocks, in bonds, on various instruments. We also can look at businesses, well, in business development, as Mr. Stevens has mentioned. So I think the options, the opportunities, increasingly becoming a lot more diverse and people should really consider taking advantage of at least some of those options. My follow-up question would be, what happens to the non-professional? How does the non-professional prepare themselves for retirement? I think the keyword that has been used here, it's recurring, is investment. It is not sufficient for you to think that you can simply pile up monies on your savings account, and then when you retire, you will live off of that. Who knows how long you're going to live after retirement? What if you get to the age of 100, which might constitute right at that time? But if you get to 100 and you retire at 55, do you have enough savings to be able to live for another 45 years? So the key thing here for me, as Mrs. Stevens said, is investment. I for one, I always like to advise young people to be mindful right now of what they spend money on. Something very basic that we tend not to pay too much attention to, are you spending your money on stuff that appreciates in value, or are you spending money on stuff that depreciates in value? So as a young person, I advise other young people, if you want to buy yourself a gift why not buy a piece of jewelry? I don't know how often gold goes down on the international market. I don't know how often precious stones, the value of them, go down on the international market. So a piece of jewelry that you may have bought for $500 now in the next 15, 20 years, maybe three, four times that value, that's an investment. It may seem on the surface that you're just treating yourself, which it also serves that purpose, but effectively you are making an investment. Why not purchase a piece of land as opposed to changing your vehicle for changing your vehicle's sake? So if we think along those lines from a very young age, it's not just about piling money up on a savings account, because I may not have $100,000 saved up on a savings account, but I have land that I can now put up on the market and redeem it for cash. I have precious stones. I have precious jewelry that I can go back and redeem if the need arises. So investment I think is the key thing here. It's not just about saving. People often think of retirement as, I must save for retirement. You must invest for retirement, because inevitably what you want to do is to continue to have a revenue stream that is coming to you, as you indicated. Your pension may be a shade of what your salary is. And yes, you may find yourself in a scenario where when you retire, your expenses may decrease. You may not have your kids at home anymore. They may have left the house and gone out, and your usage at home may be a little less, et cetera. However, your lifestyle, and that is where having an appreciation for what you want to do when you get to retirement age comes in. And again, let's stop for a break and we will continue with that at that point. Think about the children, think about the children. How will we say that? Culls and GMOs are not the solution. Use organic and join the revolution. Excessive agrochemical use, additives and genetically modified foods are harmful to health and the environment. Join the good food revolution. Grow, buy and consume organic. A message from Ryan St. Lucia and the Ministry of Sustainable Development with funding from the GEF Small Grants Program, UNDP. Okay, let's continue the discussion. You mentioned the whole question of, you know, expenses may decrease, but we also need to look at the possibility of where the expenses increase. So your income in terms of what you're spending power may be reduced because of what comes in, but there's also the possibility of increases, particularly if people have not paid off their mortgages by the time they retire. So what do you suggest in terms of, you know, how do people, you know, prepare for those eventualities? Well, the professionalism is, I mean, people have to be mindful of the health as well as the assets that they acquire in the period where they seem to be making the most income. We find some persons look for lavish houses, expensive vehicles or whatnot, and they don't prepare for retiring by looking at what will be the cost of maintenance of these assets after I've retired. And as Elijah rightly said, your income has reduced. You're now, instead of earning so many zeros, you're now down to so many, you're down low of my so many zeros. I personally have to be aware of how can I use those assets to earn income? Can I, can I, can I sublet part of my house? You know, we pay some parts of it for renting, because as, as we know, our children don't stay first, those of us who do have, and those who don't have, we are to now make sure that we put measures in place to assist ourselves. Health is something that's very expensive. Most persons while they work in a group insurance, when you retire now, insurance is all on you, only it's not a group, and most times the cost of that is triple what you're paying. How people have to be, how people have been aware or, I mean, they sit down and look at the cost of health, which is a very, very significant thing. As Elijah said, as soon as you retire, you don't even have time to spend the retirement check that they give you. Health just takes, takes, takes it away from you. But it's really the whole issue of planning. And people's being aware that I have to retire and that the earlier I start planning for that retirement, the better. Right? Yes. I think there should be a lot more focus on financial literacy, particularly for persons who are nearing retirement, even those who have already retired. I think the ECCB is doing a fairly good job in promoting financial literacy within the sub region. And I think the early needs to educate persons, not just retire, but the masses, the population in general, about how to look for investment opportunities or how to be able to measure rates of return and those things. Because as I said earlier, there's increasingly the financial market is becoming a little more sophisticated and the person needs to be well educated, not to help, because you're going to end up losing instead of gaining, if you're not able to, if you don't understand how the market works. So I think, as Mr. Elijah William said earlier, there should be a lot more focus on investment rather than savings because it might only give you 2%. And if you have a fixed deposit, it might be even less, depending on how much you have in your account. So there isn't much return on that. So the focus should be on investment planning and how do you look for various options for investing, whether it's in real estate, whether it's in financial instruments, whether it's stocks, bonds, etc., government papers, private company, corporate bonds, etc. I mean, there are a lot of opportunities. So I think retirees have to focus a lot more on how to invest their earnings. And I mean, they would have, particularly for those of us on the public service, would have gotten the gratuity and they would need to look at how we can invest that to earn a lot more high return. Because as you said, if you live 30, 40 years after retirement, I mean, the money could drive even in 10 years' time if you don't manage it properly. So you need to be able to think of how you can maximize your returns during that period. Even something in addition to that, and as you said, an economist could probably speak to that, I have no way of determining what the rate of inflation will be when I get to retirement age at this current point in time. So the value of my money that is in the bank today may be able to buy a particular basket of commodities. Will it be able to do that in 20 years' time? So which kind of places the emphasis even more on investment, because it's not sufficient just for you to just pile up cash and just figure that that will be sufficient. Yeah, that's very true. And I mean, even when we look at business, persons now would say, okay, well, when I retire, I will start a business, I'll start a little agricultural farm or something. But the cost of inputs, the cost when it comes to what will you get on the sale, the value of inputs as time goes by, it's something that most persons don't even think about much as process. So when you look at it now, you have persons who say, okay, well, I'm going to plant vegetables. What is the cost? What's the value of vegetables on the market? What's the purchasing power of vegetables? It may look like a very lucrative business. But then based on your lifestyle and what you want to achieve, it might not give you the returns that you need to achieve that. So it's really, as we said, plan early. Look at the value of investments. And you look at investment not only in real estate, in human resource. If you want to go and work for somebody else, like Mr. Siss wants to go to the international arena, what is that value of that investment that he has done already, which is his education and his experience, going to the market. And how is he going to use it? It's not just going and work somewhere or going and do business. How will you use that investment, the return on it, to continue your lifestyle and continue having a good living, as you say. As one has said, what do you think organizations can do to prepare the employees for retirement? What more can they do? Financial literacy, as Mr. Sess is alluded to earlier on. Quite a few people are just not thinking along the lines of retirement. You may have establishments that have pension plans in place, but that still does not prompt the employee to think along the lines of retirement. They just know that it's mandatory that they contribute to a pension plan and they do it. But financial literacy, bring people in like yourself that can speak to because I must say thank you to yourself because I've been to a few of your seminars and it has helped provide me with the foresight for me to push ahead and go into my own thing. And I think that's the way that corporations should be moving at this point in time. Educate your staff as to the importance of and then we take it from there. I think we'll quite be successful. I think their organization, for example, the pensioners association, they can work in conjunction with government and various employers in terms of educating the prospective retirees on opportunities that might be available in terms of how to manage. Because I think similar to, for example, we have the career guidance at the schools, for example, for young people who are going to begin the career, we can have it for retirees, a sort of guidance course on what opportunities are available for persons of retirement. So I think the pension association and employers can do that. I think the need for education clearly is the need for that. Some organizations might need to prompt their employees that retirement though it is a year left, but probably two, three years. It's important. I think like Elijah said, I think earlier people can begin to plan for retirement the better it would be for everybody. If I can just say on a last note, if I can, every Monday morning on Vibe Radio, we do a program with the Department of Commerce. It's very informative and people can tune in at 8.30 every Monday so that they can probably learn some things in terms of guiding themselves along the lines of financial management. But gentlemen, time has reached on us, but it's been an interesting conversation. There's lots more to be covered in terms of retirement planning. And then the series, which is a three-part, this is only part one. Hopefully we've opened up the topic. And CEDU is open. So persons who are thinking of them are always coming to us and they get a piece of evidence, speaking them on any ideas they may have to prepare for their retirement. That's one thing you could also do. But thank you very much for starting the conversation. And thank you to ECCB for beginning this series. And so we look forward to the second and the third part. And if necessary, based on our first discussion, there's also putting some more food for thought and the discussion will continue. So thank you very much. Thank you.