Jack Johnson is retired and, like a lot of pensioners, he hangs with his friends. He’s one of 90 retirees employed as drivers by Enterprise Car Rental in Orange County.
In Albany, N.Y., Nikki Smith morphed her career as executive director of a state and federal program into working on a funding grant with a nonprofit agency serving the elderly. Her hours are flexible, she says, and she can even spend a couple of months each winter as a “snowbird,” fleeing to warmer climes but staying in touch via telephone and computer.
They don’t need to work, say Johnson and Smith. They just like having a purpose in their lives.
So much for the American dream of golden retirement years spent playing golf.
Since Del Webb launched Sun City, Ariz., in 1960, and Leisure World opened in Orange County two years later, there’s been a national obsession to spend the years after 60 swinging in the hammock of choice.
Only those who can’t afford full-time leisure continue to labor, goes this theory.
But now aging boomers are knocking the socks off the past – just as this generation has done with every other stage of life.
Why not? Boomers could have 30 years in “retirement” after age 65. That’s a lot of golf.
Eight years ago, Marc Freedman bet these boomers would contribute to society through civic engagement and other volunteer activities. He wrote “Prime Time,” a major study on how boomers will transition to volunteering. He founded Civic Ventures, a nonprofit group to promote volunteering. He created Experience Corps and the Purpose Prize, a $100,000 grant for amazing volunteer efforts by these transitioning boomers.
The boomers volunteered, of course. But many of them demanded to be “paid volunteers,” receiving a small stipend for nonprofit work that once garnered them major paychecks in industry. An income, they argued, gave them a feeling of self-worth.
Amazingly, a lot of boomers decided not to quit their jobs at all.
Today, Freedman says, the spotlight is on continuing to work, not volunteering.
In his landmark study, “Encore, Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life” (Public Affairs, 2007), he says work will be essential for boomers. They have both a financial necessity and a psychic identity with work, he says.
That is, boomers like feeling worthwhile – and being paid to feel worthwhile.
Freedman acknowledges there’s a prejudice against older workers in many industries. It’s time, he says, to set the 60-plus workers free from forced retirement and from being prejudged as too old to keep up or learn new skills.
Too old to learn new skills?
Meet a few older workers I talked with recently. People like Lorene Christian, who lives in Leisure World, Seal Beach, and is a security guard at the community. “When I was growing up, I wanted to be a lady cop but the ’50s did not encourage that for young ladies,” she says. “My husband wanted to be a cook, but his father said, ‘No, you will be a pipe fitter.’ One day, as I left in my uniform complete with badge, he was cooking in the kitchen. It struck me so funny. I turned to him and said, ‘Well, we got our dreams. I am a cop and you are a cook.’”
She adds, “I feel useful, healthier, and that my time and skills are not being wasted. I will be 70 years old in August and have no plans to retire.”
Elaine Welty of Fort Worth, Texas, says she’s reinventing herself. First, after 35 years as a stay-at-home mom, she started driving a school bus. Seven years later, when she realized her husband’s job was going to die, she felt bold enough to look for full-time work. Now she’s a detention officer at the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth.
“I have been astounded to find I love the work,” she says. “I have wide-open opportunity for advancement, wonderful benefits and no mandatory retirement age. I am having the time of my life and am doing something important besides. … My son says I’m reinventing my life.”
Others are finding fresh ways to do the same job – but on their own terms.
Cheryl Shrock, a professor of computer-aided drafting at Orange Coast College for 18 years, plans to retire at the
Shrock will be teaching online via the Internet. She’s created an online course identical to her classroom course. Students receive the same education and units they would attending a face-to-face course, a benefit for those who can’t fit classroom attendance into their schedules.
“The class runs 24/7 and students can work at their own pace. … I will be able to continue writing instructional materials well after retirement from the classroom. This will not only keep me active, but also supplement my retirement income.”
Dan Hebert, senior technical editor for Putman Media in Orange County, says he found a new career authoring free-lance articles for trade magazines. “The going rate for compensation is about $1 a word, which works out to between $50 and $100 per hour depending on your skill level,” he writes. You can work from home, he points out. And you can make up to $6,000 month.
The qualifications? Have fairly recent experience in the field covered by the magazine – and there are tons of trade magazines – and show a flair for writing.
And then there are those who simply enjoy meeting other people. Like Bobbie Prentice, who took a job as a cashier at an Orchard Supply Hardware store in her so-called retirement years. “It’s a great job for me and I enjoy working with the public,” she says.
So far, most of these continuing-to-work boomers are falling into new careers, either reinventing their jobs or reinventing their expectations.
A few, like Jane Van Wagoner, shaped their aging future during their middle years.
When she retired from a 38-year career teaching in high school, she simply expanded her part-time marriage and family therapy practice. She developed that practice precisely to have another career once she retired from teaching.
If the old notion was freedom from work, the new one should be freedom to work, says “Encore” author Freedman.
But freedom to work carries its own burdens, as Wagoner notes: “I do take a lot of flak for working so hard, but I enjoy it and have found that I am appreciated for my knowledge and experience. My biggest complaint has been all the taxes I’m having to pay.”
Ah, but look at it this way: You’re proving wrong all the demographers who insist the tsunami of aging boomers will break the nation’s budget. Plus, you are enjoying what you do.
Who says you can’t carve a new life after 65?
Contact the writer: 949-679-6913 or jghaas@cox.net