An old man’s hobby that needs young eyes

Having just recently retired, now armed with a bit more time, I seek out opportunities that I have not been able to enjoy prior. One of the pleasures that I truly enjoy is meeting with friends, both young and old for casual conversations without the overhanging spectre of another MSTeams call coming up in 15 minutes.

Meeting with my peers, we reminisce about old times, talk about health, and compare notes on chronic medications. (my sampling thus far is showing that, controlling blood cholesterol and sugar seems to be a common recurring theme.)

Meeting with younger friends, invariably, the conversation steers to the subject about how to prepare for retirement.

With this bold step forward to ‘re-tyre’ myself, many of my younger friends think I have it all sorted out. They were curious to hear some tips and considerations, hence the free cup of tea, I am enjoying. As I have shared with all of them, this new job of ‘changing tyres’ is a fresh experience for me. I am not even sure if I am appropriately prepared with the mechanics of ‘re-tyre-ing.’ If you really want to know, come ask me again after I have gained three years of real ‘re-tyre-ing’ experience.

But, I still have to earn my free cup of tea, and I am, in my heart, still a “con-sultant.” So, after an appropriate tactical eleven seconds pause, with a solemn and serious voice, framed with a little frowning of the brow, I started sharing about my hobbies.

[ Another tip from a consultant kit bag: When you have nothing smart to say, tell stories and use allegories. Let the listeners derive their own interpretation and perceived value. The smart ones, will say you are truly smart and have depth of insight; and for the clueless people who don’t understand, just stare at them indignantly for a few seconds, and tell them to ponder a bit longer on their own when they have time, then quickly excuse yourself and walk away before they ask you for an interpretation ?? ]

What has hobbies got to do with retirement planning?

Everybody does the first obvious step when it comes to planning for retirement. They put in place a financial retirement plan. I am not a professional financial planner, even my wife doesn’t trust me to do our financial planning, so I won’t offer you any financial consultancy. Suffice to say, I started my financial retirement planning, the first year of my working career, allowing the magic of compounding to work over the last 35+ years.

Money aside, what about hobbies?

When I was young, collecting stamps was very popular. It was the king of hobbies, and hobby of kings (Yup, King George V and even Queen Elizabeth II were avid stamp collectors). I was a somewhat disadvantaged collector, I had no penpals to exchange stamps with, my parents did not work in office jobs, which could have enabled them to harvest discarded office envelops and stamps. So, for years, I jumped in and out of this hobby, hot for a few years then cold, and then hot again.

About 15 years ago, as I plan for my retirement, I realized I needed to nurture a hobby that can keep me engaged and occupied, when the manacles of modern day indentured work will finally be removed. So, with much disciplined focus, I jumped back into philately again. To increase my barrier of exit and to minimize chance of backsliding, I undertook long term infrastructural reforms. In other words, I custom built shelves and storage at home, for my current and future stamp collections. It is a fair compromise, my wife gets her shoe cupboard, I got my stamp shelves. She has her Chanel, I have my penny black.

Philately is interesting!

Philately gives moments for me to explore and learn about history, geography, arts, science and even politics, it brought me to places I will never go, for example, I collect stamps from the world’s most remote location, Tristan Da Cunha, a place so remote it takes six days by ship from Cape Town. I learnt about the different types of butterflies and dogs breeds, I learnt about Antarctica exploration and explorers, I learnt about World War 2, I learnt about the Olympics. I learnt many other varied subjects because of my eclectic curiosity, which is a nice way of saying, I collect too many things.

Over the years, I noticed the pool of stamp collectors diminishing. People don’t write letter nor send mails anymore. The convenience of e-mail has led to the decline of postal mail, and as a result, stamp collecting has declined too. The only place where stamp collecting is still somewhat vibrant is China, thanks in part to the speculative fervour of chasing the monkey, perhaps induced by chasing the dragon?

The pool of collectors, including myself, are getting older. Singapore, like many other Asian countries have an ageing population, our TFR (Total Fertility Rate) is 1.12, not as bad as South Korea’s 0.72, but certainly far below Niger’s 6.73. For stamp collectors, I suspect the TFR is around 0.1, for every 10 albums closed, only 1 new album is opened.

Stamp collecting is becoming an old man’s hobby. Not being a sexist here either, for every four gentleman collectors, we have just one lady collector. I think the ladies are smarter, they probably collect diamonds, instead of stamps.

Stamp collecting is an old man’s hobby, but it needs young eyes! Therein is the dilemma.

To discern and distinguish variations, flaws and unique rarities, does require youthful eyes.

Have a look at the two stamps below. Both are from 1880, the Straits Settlement era and featured Queen Victoria. Both were overprinted with the words “10 cents” over an older 30 cents stamp, because of the change in postal rates. There is a variation that differentiates these two stamps, the Stanley Gibbons catalog gave them two distinct catalog numbers SG22 and SG26.

So, what is the big deal?

Well, one of these stamps is cataloged at ￡600 while the other is ￡18,000.

How can old eyes tell the difference between the right and the left stamps? Alas, indeed, this is an old man’s hobby which needs young eyes. Who needs cybercriminals and elaborate phishing scams, when my cataracts can easily lighten me of ￡17,400.

As I ponder on this predicament and consider pivoting to another hobby, I can’t help but think of situations in our work-life, where we cling on to roles and jobs that are better suited for younger eyes, or younger hands or younger minds. Hmm, this is an interesting vein of thought, something worth a deeper ponder and perhaps another article later. Watch this space, let me retire to my cave and sleep on this for a little bit more.

For the moment, let me circle back to the topic of hobbies.

Hobbies are what you spend or ‘waste’ time on, for pleasure, for recreation, for personal enjoyment and growth.

Since my early working career, I sort of compartmentalise hobbies into 5 different buckets.

1. Hobby to make money. Perhaps in the best of arrangements, what you enjoy doing, is also something that makes you money. However, not everybody is able to monetize their hobby. Instead, a practical working approach is to ‘enjoy your work’. Since you have to earn a living, why not enjoy it. I have fun at work, I enjoy my work, work in a sense is a hobby for me.
2. Hobby to keep you healthy. Spend time and enjoy time keeping healthy. Do something regularly to help maintain personal health. After all, health is wealth. When I was younger, I don’t enjoy physical activities, and would find creative ways to be excused from physical exercises. 20 years ago, as part of retirement planning, I realized that I needed a hobby to keep me healthy, and hence started to pick up the cheapest healthy hobby possible, jogging. 10 years ago, as my weight tracks my age upwards, and with chronic wear and tear on the knees, I picked up another hobby for health, swimming. What is your hobby for health?
3. Hobby to give you knowledge. I am generally curious about different things, and I do love learning up on new subjects. For many people, expressions of this hobby can come in the form of reading; learning by interacting with others; listening to podcasts; googling on topics of interest; learning new skills; visiting and experiencing new places, etc. For me, collecting stamps falls into this category. There are many ways to add to your personal knowledge of the world around us. If we want our brain cells to last longer, we need to keep them busy, occupy them, practice filling them up with knowledge both new and old. Perhaps this too, is a hobby to fend off dementia.
4. Hobby to keep you creative. Many smart people are creative. Creativity is an outward expression of the abundance that is within the person. Do you know that Churchill paints? I have seen some of his oil paints, it is not too bad. Do you know that Charlie Chaplin writes symphonies? Do you know that Einstein plays the violin? Do you SM Lee Hsien Loong, codes in C++? Do something different to inspire creativity to stoke the flame of enterprise. I must admit, I have not done much to nurture this hobby category. Evidently not very smart. I tried photography, but was only able to invest money, but not enough time on it. It is never too late, as you are reading this, you are in fact helping me live out my new ‘creative’ hobby, writing. Just experimenting and exploring a different way to keep me creative.
5. Hobby to grow your worldview and mindset. We all know the world is bigger than us, but how many of us invest our time to see, to know and to understand the world beyond our frog-in-the-well view? I am sure you know of people whose world view is very narrow, especially if they only feed within the echo-chamber of their narrow believes. The confirmation bias that comes from the lack of diverse perspectives creates a dangerous polarization that is unhealth. The world is big, learn widely; read widely; listen widely; accept openly; understand carefully; synthesize cautiously. For me, I put in effort to nurture a worldview and mindset that is literally out of the world. I have a spiritual, faith based believe that guides me in my interpretation of life and understanding of life’s purpose. When one’s worldview is bigger than one’s own self, significance and relevance can truly be better appreciated, understood and enjoyed.

Hobbies engages the mind, it refreshes the person, and it inspires new possibilities. It is important that we carve out time to nurture different types of hobbies in a wholistic way, rebalancing the investment as we move through different phases of our lives.

If you only have one hobby (e.g. ‘hobby to make money’) when you can’t pursue that hobby any more, it might be too much shock to the psyche. Worse yet, if you have no hobbies, then life might just be rather meaningless.

Re-tyre-ing merely allows me pause to plan and an opportunity to reallocate my time differently. I will reduce time spent on my “hobby to make money”, so that I can give more time to invest in other hobbies. There are so many exciting hobbies out there, I might run out of time, instead of hobbies to get into.

Are you concerned about retirement?

Don’t be. Plan for it, embrace it. Start first by nurturing some more hobbies.

Or, just call me up for a cup of tea and a chat.

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Just for the record, SG26 is cataloged at ￡18,000. Any interested young eyes can always PM me, hahaha.