I worked for many years believing that when I reached retirement, I would finally have the financial security and stability that I had earned through a lifetime of work. I planned my retirement around my end-of-service indemnity, my savings, and the modest income I could receive from a house that I inherited from my parents and rented out. Before the financial crisis, when the exchange rate was around LBP 1,500 to USD 1, this income was sufficient for me to meet my needs and live with dignity.
Then, in 2019, everything changed. Lebanon’s financial and economic crisis began at precisely the stage of my life when I was supposed to benefit from what I had worked for and saved. The collapse of the Lebanese Lira destroyed the real value and purchasing power of my income, my savings, and, most painfully, my end-of-service indemnity.
For me, this represents one of the greatest injustices of my retirement. I worked for years and fulfilled my responsibilities with the understanding that my end-of-service indemnity would protect me when I could no longer depend on regular employment. This money was not a gift or assistance; it was a right that I had earned through years of work. Yet when the time came for me to benefit from it, its real value had been almost completely eroded.
This is why, in practical terms, I consider myself to have retired without an end-of-service indemnity. The amount may have existed on paper in Lebanese Lira, but it no longer represented the value of what I had earned or the financial protection it was intended to provide. I reached retirement only to discover that the security I had spent my working life building had disappeared.
Unfortunately, my losses did not end with the financial crisis. The war in 2024 brought another devastating setback. I lost additional savings and property, further weakening the limited security I still had. After losing the value of my retirement benefits and savings to the economic collapse, the war took away yet another part of what I had relied upon for my future.
Today, even my housing situation is uncertain. I am currently living in a house where I face the threat of eviction. At a stage of life when I should be able to feel secure in my home and depend on the fruits of decades of work, I instead live with uncertainty about both my income and my housing.
I still depend mainly on the limited rental income from the house I inherited from my parents, together with support from my community, while continuing to undertake some voluntary work. These have become the means through which I try to maintain a basic level of dignity and independence.
What is particularly painful is that retirement should be the period when a person can finally rely on what they have built throughout their working life. Instead, I have experienced one loss after another: the collapse in the value of my end-of-service indemnity, the erosion of my savings and income, losses caused by the 2024 war, and now the threat of losing the stability of the home in which I live.
This is my reality of growing older and retiring in Lebanon. I worked throughout my life to prepare for this stage, yet I reached retirement without the financial security I had earned and with uncertainty even about having a stable place to live. At this age, I cannot recover the years that have passed or simply start my working life again to rebuild everything that was lost.
I did not expect retirement to mean starting over and searching again for the security that I had spent my entire working life trying to build. I am not asking for privilege. I simply hope to live this stage of my life with dignity, in a safe and stable home, and with the basic financial and social protection that every person should be able to expect after a lifetime of work.