“Retirement” is traditionally thought to be the time when you are no longer working — you’ve punched the clock for four decades or more already, and now it’s time to sit back and draw your pension checks or Social Security. The idea of working in retirement is contradiction in terms.
And yet more and more people are choosing to do just that. There are many reasons for this trend: most important, we are living longer. When average life spans didn’t extend beyond the early 70s, there was little incentive to work after retiring in your early 60s. One could only look forward to ten years of retirement, often in rapidly deteriorating health. Nowadays, retirees can look forward to thirty years or more of active retirement; that’s a long time to spend just sitting under a palm tree! Plus, most of those later years can be enjoyed in full physical and mental health, and many of us will want to put ourselves to good use.
The financial aspect of working in retirement is a second important incentive. Social Security payments, and most pensions, are fixed income. Over the course of ten years, inflation isn’t going to eat away at your buying power in any significant way; however, over thirty years, a fixed-income pension leaves you vulnerable to considerable inflation risk. And even if you’ve saved a large sum of money, a million dollars or more, you may have trouble making that last over a period of decades. Working becomes a financial necessity.
Working in retirement rarely means continuing on in your old job, though there may be ways to wind down over a period of time, transitioning to part-time work or consulting work with your former company. However, if you continue to derive interest from your field and can stay current with it, you may have great value as a consultant. Keep your rolodex, continue to network, and you might find that others will pay good money for your expertise, drawn from a lifetime of experience in your field. As a consultant, you can set your own hours, pick your own clients, and conceivably earn more than you ever did as a salaried employee.
Other retirees may want nothing to do with their old careers; with thirty years or more to look forward to, why not start a new life entirely? If you’ve been a salesman all your life but have always loved caring for animals, it may not be realistic to go back to school and study to be a veterinarian from scratch, with all the years of study that would entail. (Though some individuals indeed do take up such challenges and succeed.) However, you could take courses at your local community college and qualify to become a veterinary technician — the training and workload are challenging enough to be fully satisfying. Find some lower-caliber position in a field you’ve always been interested in, and aim for that. You’ll never be the boss, but as a retiree, who needs that kind of pressure?
If you’re entrepreneurial and have some cash, you can always start up a small business. Many retirees convert lifelong hobbies into small businesses — becoming a beekeeper or small-scale farmer, for instance, or transitioning from collecting model trains to dealing them. If you’ve always enjoyed entertaining, then move to your dream retirement destination, purchase a large house, and open a bed and breakfast. Bear in mind that operating a small business is not a 9-to-5 job, and you can’t choose your own hours. You have to be dedicated, energetic, and wealthy enough to risk a portion of your retirement savings on initial operating expenses. Many small businesses fail, but at least as many succeed — and you’ll never know unless you try, right?
If you don’t need the income but feel the need to contribute to society, you can always volunteer. No matter where you live, your neighborhood is full of organizations that rely to some extent on volunteers; it should not be difficult to find an organization that could use your particular skills. On a bigger scale, the Peace Corps, which once relied on younger volunteers, is more and more turning to retirees to supplement its ranks. Spending two years abroad as a Peace Corps volunteer may be one of the most rewarding and challenging ways that you can spend your early retirement.