I hang my boots, not my gloves, says Ajit Menon with quiet certainty, the kind that comes from years of willful choices, not only in the business world, but also in life. At 54, Menon announced to retire as CEO of PGIM India Mutual Fund next year. His exit is known for its clarity on thinking, steady leadership and the first attitude of investors. It’s not about walking away from anything; It’s about walking to something else, completely on its terms. In an interview with Mint, Menon reflects on his early decision to retire next year when he turns 55, the planning that made it possible, and what his next chapter looks like. It is a rare look at a professional transition that has not led by burnout or coercion, but by clarity and long -distance thinking. Q. It is not a small achievement to retire at 55, and only a few succeed in achieving it. When did you think of this goal, and how have your life and finances reversed to make it happen? The purpose of stopping at a specific age, although always in the background, took concrete form about 12 years ago, while my wife Alinaa and I posted our financial plan with the help of our adviser. We started defining all the goals we wanted, and with the help of our adviser we began and assigned our current assets and future income to this. Our advisor helped each one to bucket each. This has meant that we leave some assets, pay off loans and find a solution for our budget and the gaps. I simply chose the age of 55 to get to my retirement goal at the beginning. The process of financial planning is the hero rather than the plan. Question: Was there a defining moment or a life experience that made you sit and consciously decide: “That’s it, I want to retire at 55? Not in my case. I truly liked the work, the firm and the industry and continued to do so. I just had a lot of interests and hobbies that I wanted to spend more time at some point, which is not too late for one to lose motivation or energy. The financial freedom to get there was largely thanks to an advisor watch over a written plan for me and my wife and to a certain extent a happy coincidence because of the choice of career and family circumstances. Having great talent in the senior leadership at the firm helped to leave the role in good hands. Question: We regularly talk about retirement in numbers, corpus size, withdrawal rate, inflation, etc. But what was your emotional anchor? What kind of life did you envisage after 55? A busy one where I can use my hands on creative pursuit and nature, just like my head for my continued workers. A large extended family and circle of friends to spend time together. Keep staying fit and healthy. My interest in behavioral science and psychology around long -term goal planning tell me that it is humanly difficult to think and plan so far in advance, which contributes to the struggle we all face. It is too haze, so we prioritize in favor of the prioritization more closely like a home, car or a child’s education and marriage. One hack is to frame and visualize what you are doing and what happy moment you can visualize to use as anchor for your current efforts. I hope to dance with my granddaughter during her wedding. Question: Do you follow a specific strategy for asset allocation or framework for retirement planning -for example, the ‘bucket strategy’, ‘4% rule’, or something unique that worked for you? You can say that we used the bucket approach. Reducing the concentration of any specific asset class at the starting point, prioritizing incremental income to specific goals, consider lifestyle choices to save more, such as staying on rent to use tax benefits or always buy our second -hand car. In both cases, we were able to get a larger house and a high car without breaking the bank. However, these are personal choices. For the withdrawal phase, our advisor included the buckets over the period, which includes fairness for longer -term requirements, on the period of the risk of returns of long -term returns. Question: Can someone get financial freedom at an early age by only having jobs and investing in shares? Depends on work and the shares. But mostly it will depend on happiness and not skill to succeed. The risk here is that your income is only dependent on one skill. Since my CIO likes to remind us of the benefits of using a professional fund manager or advisor, the difference between happiness and skill is that skill is repeatable. So I would say that a young person with multiple skills that can be earned invests in shares connected to a plan with the help of her advisor can achieve what she wants. Question: In retrospect, if 35-year-old Ajit Menon could hear from 55-year-old Ajit today-who one piece of retirement planning advice would he be the most surprised to hear? An insight I learned from meeting with experienced advisors who deal with the practical and personal challenges of many households that handle them day and day. That “Retirement is the only financial purpose of your life for which you do not get a conventional loan.” So prioritize it. Your child will exceed your expectations and get a larger college, you may want to stretch to get the extra bedroom or upgrade your car. You get an education loan, a home loan and a car loan to fill the void. But there is no “retirement loan”. And reverse mortgage, which uses more developed markets than one solution, has not yet developed in India. By the way, I am 54. I will be Stay on August 31 as a senior advisor for the team until March 26, the month in which I turn 55. Question: You told someone that your boots hung, not your gloves. What does the next turn look like, and has your financial planning made this freedom possible? Yes. Continue with my passion for retail investors and the topic of retirement at work. A little community work in an unrelated but important area that entails nature. To return to some creative hobbies and spend time with close and loved ones. And yes, I would say that a financial plan is that has helped all of the above.
You can get a loan for everything – except pension, says Ajit Menon, CEO of PGIM MF | Mint
