Superinsecurity

(Note: Names and circumstances in this story have been altered.)

Last February my mate  Don died aged 67. Heart attack. Pity.

He was a good sort, Don: gregarious, loved good food, reading, the outdoors, life… On Saturday mornings a group of us would hit the golf course and belt away the week’s frustrations, then shared drinks at the bar talking handicaps, the falling share market and  the rising cost of living.

For almost 40 years Don was a mathematics teacher in the State school system. It wasn’t supposed to be for that long. Years ago, still in his forties, he started talking about early retirement.

‘I’m gonna build up my super and be out of there at 55.’

By ‘there’ he meant the classroom, the politics of the  Education Department, the rat race. His dream was to get a place down Mount Barker way, the town where he started his teaching career when he first migrated to Australia at age 24. Subsequently he moved to the city, and trained up as a secondary teacher. High school he enjoyed less but he felt there was no way he would back to primary,  it would feel like a demotion. Besides, the pay was better.

As the decades marched on, the work got harder, the expectations rose, the kids got more difficult to handle. They wanted to be entertained. Don was of the old school, a blackboard and chalk teacher. Put up a formula, explain the process, lots of classroom exercises and  homework. Trouble was that the kids were not listening. In the new philosophy mathematics was meant to be taught as a game, it was meant to be fun. As the years passed  Don became less patient,  less inclined to play games with the kids.

His dream of retiring to Mount Barker looked even more appealing. By then the town had expanded, acquired a golf course and  developed into a grape growing region, with a reputation for fine reds. There was nothing that Don liked more than a rare steak washed down with a glass or two of cab-sav.

So in his early fifties he started doing the maths of his retirement.   He figured he needed a substantial super to draw on. So he devised a plan.  He had no children so there was no point in holding on to the house. Who would he leave it to? Yes, there was an older sister back in the U.K. that he corresponded with from time to time, but she was well catered for, judging by the number of holidays she took each year to their family beach house in Spain.  So he sold the house and put the equity into super, which doubled in value in one go, then rented a one-bedroom flat. He watched with great satisfaction as his nest egg grew larger.

‘I want to live well in my old age. I don’t want to skimp when I retire.’

Best of all, he didn’t have to rely on government handouts to survive. A proud, independent spirit was old Don.

Mount Barker loomed large and desirable on the horizon. He’d rent  a small cottage in town- he had no intention of burying himself in some far off forest, he needed to have people around him. He would join the golf club of course, play a few holes at least three times  a week, read the books he had always wanted to read but never got around to doing it. And maybe do a bit of travel, though this was not a priority for him. Sure he was drawn to exotic places like  Peru or India, but he knew that he would probably never get there. He did want to go to the UK to visit his sister, older  than him by almost 7 years, who had recently lost her husband. It would be nice to see her after a separation of some 30 years.

So in his mid-fifties  his golfing mates started to notice a change in Don. His talk became repetitive and more than a little obsessive, his conversation was full of  salary sacrifice, super build up, cost of living,  tax credits, negative gearing. 

The trouble was that with each passing year, the financial gurus kept increasing the size of the nest egg that was needed to live comfortably as a self-funded retiree.

 ‘Just one more year then I’m out of here.’ It became his mantra.

The years piled on, and because high schools were short of mathematics teachers, Don was allowed to stay on beyond retirement age.  As a result,  aged  67, there he was standing still at the chalk face, bellowing out at a bunch of 14 year olds, ‘I’m warning you guys, if you don’t get that homework done, on Monday you’re staying in at recess. ‘

Well those students were spared the punishment because, come Monday, news broke that Mr Don Effingham had suffered a massive coronary and died before they could get him to hospital.

A search by the authorities traced his sister, who was nearly 75, in a nursing home in the  UK, suffering from advanced state of dementia. Her 43 year old daughter was project officer with the Leicester city council, career person, no children and married to a barrister. Two fat salaries, no kids. Soon their already substantial bank account would be considerably inflated by a six-figure inheritance from Australia, from an uncle they had never met and, busy people as they are, had forgotten that he existed.