Fifty-five, Unemployed, and Faking Normal: Your Guide to a Better Retirement Life

by Elizabeth White

The bottom line is that we are where we are. And it’s from here that we start. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges we’re facing, there is much we can learn from our peers who are experimenting with unconventional approaches

Receiving the full social security benefit isn’t even an option.

“Help is available, but you have to look for it, and you have to ask,” Zoe said. “I found that virtually all creditors will work with you if you tell them what’s going on. But you have to ask and ask more than once about programs for people facing hardships, because lots of times, this information is not volunteered.”

When we hear “cut back” or “downsize,” we cringe. Many of us think lower standards of living, failure, limits, lack, and deprivation.

Showing up matters. I want to be there for the big

You’re going to experience profound feelings of loss, dislocation, upset and sadness if you’re among those used to plopping down your company credit card to pay for four- and five-star hotels and turning left instead of right when you board an international flight.

kvetching

you become more conscious and more intentional about what you’re buying.

Confusing Wants with Needs We live in a culture that creates need where none existed before and defines quality of life as a metric of income. When you’re making money, all of that mindless consumption goes unnoticed and unchecked. When funds are tight, you have to think about it. What do you really need to feel deeply grounded and content? You’ll discover that you actually need very little. It really does not cost much to be happy.

But first you have to know what you need at a bare minimum to be happy, and then you need to investigate alternative ways to keep those things in your life. It’s never going to look like it did before, but even in the midst of ongoing money

Larry Winget’s book You’re Broke Because You Want to Be: How to Stop Getting By and Start Getting Ahead.

Read next

But working out once a week is a good-enough way to start. Or simply just get out and walk.

Just start somewhere and build.

Because of our financial situations, a large number

four—cancer, strokes, heart disease, and diabetes—account for two-thirds of all deaths in the United States.

But

preventative

Author Marilyn Paul sums it up perfectly in her book, It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys: The Seven Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized. Mired in our possessions and wallowing in self-pity, we deny the world our talents, our gifts, and our hearts.

Another book

For help with housing, check out the Making Home Affordable program. Its number is 1-888-995-4673, and its website is (https://www.makinghomeaffordable.gov/steps/Pages/step-1-identify-situation.aspx).

Affordable housing programs

The AARP Foundation Home Solutions Center offers free HUD-certified counseling and assistance to homeowners who are fifty or older and at risk of foreclosure. Here’s the program’s website: (http://www.aarp.org/aarp-foundation/our-work/housing/housing-solutions-center/). If you are 62, cash poor but have a lot of equity in your home, the National Council on Aging (https://www.ncoa.org/economic-security/home-equity/) can help you explore the pros and cons of reverse mortgages. Don’t forget about your options for finding housemates.

Housing programs for 50+

Sara’s Homestay (https://www.sarahomestay.com/homestay) provides rooms and meals to foreign students and lists about ten thousand hosts around the world. If you have one or more spare bedrooms and would be willing to host one or more foreign students, this resource might work for you. There will be a greater demand for your residence if you live in a popular city near local amenities and have access to public transportation. Students are guaranteed a continental breakfast, dinner, and a modest, clean room and a bathroom, both of which may be shared with another student.

For example, seniors sixty and older are exempt from the SNAP work requirement. SNAP requires all Able Bodied Adults Without Children (ABAWD) “to work at least 80 hours per month, participate in qualifying education and training activities at least 80 hours per month, or comply with a workforce program.”

Chris Hawkins at seniorliving.org has put together a good list of additional resources to help older adults who are short on cash with housing, healthcare, transportation and more (http://www.seniorliving.org/retirement/resources-surviving-social-security/).

No one owes you anything. No one is under any obligation whatsoever to help you…not your aging parents; your siblings; your adult children, nieces, or nephews; or your closest friends.

To compete in the global marketplace, companies have to be nimble and agile. This need for flexibility is changing the future of work. Well-paid, secure jobs with health insurance and employer-matched retirement plans are being replaced by contract work and contingent, part-time/temporary, and freelance jobs.

Freelancers Union estimates that fifty-three million people, or about one in three US workers, are currently employer independent and part of the freelance contingent workforce.40 This number is projected to increase to over 40 percent by 2020.

As a contract worker in the so-called gig economy, you basically eat what you kill. No work, no pay. And while this may be great for businesses, it’s a mixed bag for us plus fifty workers. At a time when we most need income predictability and security, contract or freelance work offers neither.

It is refusing to learn and, in the worst case, having a sense of self-righteous disdain for any of the new technologies that make contingency work feasible. Faced with accelerating changes and disruptive technologies, some of us hold tight to old models of work, refusing to budge from what is familiar. Recruiters say that nothing ages us faster.

In a lot of cases, independent work allows us to

test the waters as “micro-entrepreneurs” without putting capital at risk. And depending on what we’re selling, we can set our own rates, participate part time, and at least feel like our own bosses.

Uber, the largest of the ride-sharing services, commissioned a study in 2015 and found that 24.5 percent of its drivers were over fifty.41 In fact, Uber has more driver-partners over fifty than under thirty (19 percent) and offers a special incentive to AARP members who sign up.

Airbnb,

reports that one in four hosts in the United States are over age fifty, and 13 percent of hosts ...

sampling: Airbnb (https://www.airbnb.com) offers

Now, nobody’s getting rich by gigging with these companies. Earnings are all over the map, with Airbnb being at the high end.

It won’t surprise you that the debate rages on about whether the shared economy is for good, bringing freedom, choices, and much-needed employment to millions of people, or for bad, degrading labor standards, evading regulations, and creating a nation of low-wage, part-time workers. And the debate and its ramifications are not just being felt in the United States.

At least when you were working, you had some support. But now you’re doing everything—clerical work, bookkeeping, sales, follow-ups, R and D, and more. You have ten jobs instead of one.

You’ve told me that your friends who are still in

jobs with real clout and hiring authority just aren’t that helpful. It’s not like you’re asking them to put forward someone who’s unqualified.

My last four gig-assignments came from midlevel managers in their thirties and forties. I’ve noticed that many of us don’t include those kinds of people in our professional and social networks. But often they’re the people who know

Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the Second Half of Life, Marc Miller and Susan Lahey make the case that a casual acquaintance,

weak ties are more likely to bring us into contact with networks outside of our circles, exposing us to work opportunities and information about jobs, deals, start-ups, and more that our friends don’t know

“Get off your throne,” she said. “Money is green.”

But it is saying that in the new normal, we’re going to have to let go of this notion that our values and worth are based solely on our titles, incomes, and jobs.

In

world, and women over a certain age are invisible. Unfortunately, we discuss injustice and debate

Keep in mind too that we’re still in the early days of inhabiting this new land, and no one has it all figured out. Most of us are just making it up as we go along.

According to AARP, “only one out of three older Americans receive regular payments from pensions and retirement savings.”55 With pensions pretty much going the way of the dinosaurs, we boomers are the first generation expected to save enough to fund our own retirement needs.

Apartment rents too have gone through the roof. Apartment List analyzed census data from 1960–2014 and found that over this period, “inflation-adjusted rents [rose] by 64 percent, but real household incomes increased by 18 percent.”59

And people of color are faring worse. The Harvard study found that older adults from ethnic and racial minorities are disproportionately burdened by housing costs, with Asian households spending 39 percent of household income on housing, Hispanic households spending 43 percent, and black households spending 46 percent, compared to 29 percent for whites.