Why do Indians want to retire early?

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While 61 % of the workforce in India wishes to retire in the next five years, 59 per cent cite work- related pressure as the primary reason for doing so.

If given a chance, 61 per cent of— the 45+— India’s working population, will be willing to retire in the next five years, says, The Future of Retirement Survey by HSBC. However, 14 per cent of this workforce also realise that they will they will be unable to do so.

Among those who shared their constraints on being able to retire, around 71 per cent said the primary reason was financial challenges. Of this lot, 53 per cent say they do not have enough savings; 42 per cent worry about dependants who rely on their income and 17 per cent have a lot of debt to repay.

The primary reason, for those wanting to retire early, is their desire to spend more time with their family, and around 43 per cent of respondents have given the same opinion. Approx. 34 per cent, of those keen to retire, want to pursue their interests or travel. 20 per cent of them want to take up another career or voluntary work. However, with 59 per cent of the respondents stating work-related pressures and issues as the reason, this seems to be the biggest reason for the urge to retire.

The survey reveals that women workers are more keen to retire early, than men. Around 64 per cent of women respondents want to retire in the next five years vis-à-vis 54 per cent men.

S. Ramakrishnan, head-retail banking and wealth management, HSBC India, says, “People worldwide are recognising that retirement can be an opportunity for reinvention and new beginnings. Yet, financial barriers are preventing many people from retiring.”

The survey reveals that around 20 per cent of the respondents had this apprehension that they will never be able to retire fully due to financial pressure.

Globally, the desire to retire early was maximum in Argentina (78 per cent) followed by France
(77 per cent), China (75 per cent)and UK (75 per cent).

The study interviewed over 18,000 people across 17 countries, worldwide.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Indeed a thought-provoking survey. The financial burden, the pressure to achieve sales targets, job insecurity, late working hours with no room for additional wages,inhumane conditions of traveling to the office, poor maternity benefits to employees are actually a common scenario when it comes to Indian Work culture. The Women workforce is finding difficult to match up herself in every assignment and live up to the expectations. (professionally or on domestic front)

  2. The greedy of the employers and the bosses on the one side and the lack of human respect coupled with expectations of willy-nilly high performance on every aspect (not the overall performance) cause discordant in employees about the very purpose of work and question what kind of life they desire to lead. Increasingly, employees too have choices in this network era while the organization’s and bosses still remain in the manufacturing and feudal mode. This will hurt organisations in terms of knowledge loss and high transaction cost.

  3. This was anticipated that majority wants to retire early and is in race to build assets for sustaining.
    But, what’s catchy is ‘If given a chance’ being the start of the information.
    The price that we are all paying today is sacrifice of personal life, health, interests, and hobbies with work. That’ might be the reason why most opt to spend time with family to make it up.
    Its a great data. It leads to balancing of workforce in years to come. But, individually where does it lead to?
    If people are pressurized, almost in a state to say – if given an opportunity, they want to quit’, on the contrary working only because of financial constraint, leads to such a bad disengagement and we speak about passion at work. Does Passion and Pressure go together!!!

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