3 keys for Boomers to find balance through travel

“Get your motor running. Head out on the highway... cause baby you were born to run.” 

The lure of the road calls you. In your heart and mind, you’re filled with the desire to experience that sense of adventure and curiosity you had as a child. Yet, adult responsibilities and the need for security dampen your dreams of hitting the road.

Fortunately, today there are endless possibilities to blend travel and work. Conventional work is changing. New online tools that didn’t exist a couple years ago can now make even traditional jobs location independent.

Boomers looking to blend work and play are wise to consider these three keys to finding the right balance.

1) Prepare a Plan - Explore all the options of retirement travel trends. Do you plan to travel full time? Travel and work part-time? Where do you plan to travel? Whether you plan to dip your toes in water close to home or sell the house and car and go all in -- technology and flexible working arrangements can make just about anything possible.

Identify your “must haves” and “deal breakers” for this lifestyle. How much flexibility do you desire in your work opportunities? How much time do you want to work? Do you want to settle in for a month or two at a location or keep moving?

Your finances, health, family obligations, and community responsibilities will shape your travel/work lifestyle. Stepping away from the security and comfort of your home and job is a big step. It’s smart to do a test run close to home to identify your personal limitations and desires.

2) Don’t Ditch the Daily Routine - You finally have the freedom to fill your days with more of what you want to do vs. what you have to do. Stress remains, but it’s a different kind of stress. Learning how to be productive is essential to finding balance when traveling.

It’s easy to get distracted because every new destination feels like a vacation. But if you get too caught up in work assignments, you'll miss the adventure. The key is to maintain a daily routine. Schedule your work time and your play time.

3) Travel Tech for Both Work and Play - The internet is transforming work and travel. The very idea of traditional work is transforming. Online tools open up new locations for independent job opportunities, and this type of work is becoming more and more mainstream. Digital nomads are no longer coach surfers doing odd jobs.

Access to a reliable wifi connection is a must for email, online collaboration, and video calls to get work done. A tethered wifi plan through a mobile provider ensures reliable internet access when traveling throughout the United States. Mastering online work tools such as Google Docs, Google Hangouts, Basecamp, and Dropbox are vital for the traveling and working Boomer.

A Chromebook, Tablet, and/or iPhone provide you with all the tools you need for work and fun.

Taking the time to put together a plan, exercising daily discipline while on the road, and the smart use of technology helps you unplug from a traditional job, experience adventure, and find balance between work and fun.

If you’re healthy, curious, enjoy diversity and meeting new people, and have the time and money, why not head out on the highway? You have all the options and tools to do it on your own terms.

Five signs you’re ready for an encore career

After decades of gaining experience and wisdom in your career, you may be looking for a new chapter where you can work on your own terms -- even during retirement. Pursuing an "encore career" offers this kind of flexibility, giving you freedom that you may not have previously enjoyed.

Are you ready to take this step? Here are a few ways that you can tell if you're among the growing number of people who are ready for encore opportunities.

1) Your career is losing appeal
Sometimes your longstanding career just isn't that appealing anymore. With society's focus on knowing what you're going to do by the time you're in your 20s, a lot can happen that can leave you dissatisfied. It's only natural when you've spent years mastering your profession. Encore careers offer opportunities to share that lifetime of expertise in new fields or in ways that mentor younger professionals. 

2) You have time and energy to spare

If you wake up every morning feeling like you've got a lot of living left to do and expertise to share, this is no longer a question of whether encore careers are right for you -- it's a question of which one sounds like the most fun and fulfilling.

3) You want to explore something new
A few years ago, you may have wanted to take on a new challenge but were afraid because of your personal and professional responsibilities. The good news is that now is the best time to try something new, even if you aren't quite sure what that "something new"might be. 

Exploring a new career can take you to places and experiences that you may have never dreamt of in your previous career. Even short-term assignments provide the flexibility to explore something new and fulfilling. 

4) You thirst for meeting new people
For many, the old perception of "retirement" isn't what it's cracked up to be. If you are seeking connections on a professional level and like being around new people, an encore career can be the perfect opportunity to get involved in new situations and get to know a new social set that you
never would've considered before.

5) Working is no longer about the money 
While working may no longer be about "the money" (maybe it never was) you may be in the position to explore more personally fulfilling work engagements. The supplemental income is nice but at this stage in your life it's more about passion. You have the energy to give back, so you might as well use it to enrich your life and make the world a better place.

This is a chance to do what you've always wanted to without the fear. It's your time now. Take the plunge and see what you've been missing.

photo credit: leesean via photopin cc

Confessions of a born-again marketer

By John Peirce

To my shock, I’m finding that I’m actually enjoying marketing my second book, Social Studies, an essay collection I recently had self-published with Friesen Press in Victoria. If anyone had suggested, even last year, that I’d enjoy marketing of any kind, I’d have told them they were nuts.

To say that I grew up with a prejudice against marketing is to understate things considerably. Marketers—the folks who pushed soap flakes and laxatives on TV—were just one step above carnival barkers, and not a very big step, at that.

This prejudice was reinforced during my years at Amherst College, where I was an English major. In the Amherst English department, irony and emotional coolness were the order of the day. Our very first freshman composition assignment pilloried a man who claimed to be able to teach people the essentials of good writing for the even-then modest sum of $35. The ultimate insult would have been for a professor to describe one of his students’ papers as “promotional” in tone. But I’m sure this never happened. By the time we’d been at Amherst for a month, we’d all have been far too gun-shy to even consider using such language.

When my first book—an industrial relations textbook—was published 15 years ago, I was delighted to learn that I would have absolutely nothing to do with marketing the book. There would be no launch, no readings, no driving around town with a box of books in my car. Like most textbook writers, I didn’t have my photo on the book’s cover. Even that would have been considered too promotional.

Marketing Canadian Industrial Relations was left to the professionals in the publisher’s marketing department, who evidently did their job quite well. Through three editions, the book has sold close to 20,000 copies. I wouldn’t have come anywhere close to that on my own.

As I sat back and collected my royalty cheques, I sometimes contemplated the fate of fellow writers who had chosen to self-publish their books. By and large, their lot didn’t seem a happy one. From where I sat, self-published authors looked to be facing an endless round of driving around to readings and book fairs, intermitted only by dealings—generally not the pleasantest of dealings—with the chain bookstores and book wholesalers whom they were trying to persuade to sell their book for them. Without getting into particulars, I can say that some of the stories I heard qualified as full-fledged nightmares.

Needless to say, such stories did little to diminish my already considerable skepticism about self-publishing. I also didn’t like the appearance of many self-published books. I figured that if a book looked as amateurish as many of the self-published ones I saw did, its contents probably wouldn’t be much better.

But over the years, self-publishing has changed, as has the marketing of self-published books. Many self-published books now look very much like the products of the most prestigious commercial publishing houses. This recognition, coupled with a number of refusals from commercial houses, convinced me that I’d better self-publish my book if I wanted it to see the light of day.

At the same time, thanks mainly to the Internet, the marketing of these books has evolved considerably from the “box of books in the trunk” days. It would be fair to say that my publisher and I are partners in marketing my book. Friesen’s offers Social Studies through its online bookstore and has also arranged for the book to be made available through Amazon.com. Though I make occasional individual sales to friends and will be doing some readings and book-signings in the fall, once people are back in town, my job is primarily to tell my friends, acquaintances, and connections through various groups how they can order the book. Thanks again to e-mail and the Internet, I can do this in the privacy of my home, without ever knocking on a door or making a phone call.

To my amazement, I’m discovering that even a bona fide introvert like me can be an effective marketer. I’m liking the challenge of seeing how many different groups I belong to and how many ways there are for me to reach those groups. By the time I’m finished—I’ve only just started my marketing—I expect to have contacted at least a dozen different groups to which I belong or have in the past belonged. These include, among others, writers’ groups, tennis clubs, and prep school and college alumni associations. The people I know from these groups number in the hundreds. While it may always have been true that, as the poet John Donne once said, “No man is an island,” this is even truer now than it would have been 50 years ago.

Nor need this “New Age” approach to marketing be confined to writers. With a few obvious modifications, the same approach could be used to promote a dog-walking service, a catering business, or a landscaping service. This is not to say that more traditional forms of advertising such as newspaper or Yellow Pages ads don’t still have their place. They do, particularly if yours is an established business or service. But by and large, the network-based approach I’ve outlined here offers a greater chance of success, particularly for new or somewhat unconventional products or services. By pitching your product or service to people you know, or at the very least to organizations within which you are a known quantity, you have got your foot in the door; you are coming in as a known quantity. This can only help your efforts.

Even after just a few weeks, I’ve found that marketing my book is starting to make my life richer, both by getting me in touch with old friends and by helping me make new ones. But there’s another lesson here, and it doesn’t apply only to those of us who are marketing something. Our retirement years can be a glorious period of discovery, a time to start exploring new worlds. If we’re going to find out all we can about those new worlds, however, we will first have to let go of some of our old prejudices (like mine against marketing) that keep us stuck in old ways. You will only be able to see those new worlds once you take off your blinders and start looking at things from a fresh perspective.


This article is another in a series by Jon Peirce, a retired professor and union representative and long-time free-lance journalist, on subjects of interest to boomers. Some of Jon’s previous work has appeared in such publications as The Globe & Mail, the Christian Science Monitor, the Ottawa Citizen, Books in Canada, the Toronto Star, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, and the Kingston Whig-Standard. Jon currently writes, teaches writing courses at the Nova Scotia Seniors’ College, and serves on the Advisory Committee of the Silver Economy Engagement Network, all of this while doing an M.A. in history at Dalhousie. He is a professional member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. His interests include tennis, swimming, improvisational dance, and cooking, and he has recently returned to the stage after a 46-year intermission, playing Judge Omar Gaffney in a Dartmouth Players production of Harvey. His second book, Social Studies; Collected Essays, 1974-2013, has just been published by Friesen’s Press in Victoria; his first book, Canadian Industrial Relations, originally published in 1999, is now in its third edition with Pearson Education Canada.

Disability not a black-and-white issue

By Jon Peirce

If you’re like most people, you tend to divide the world into two groups: those who are fully physically abled, and those who are disabled. In this typology, the latter group is made up of people with visible or at least readily discernible disabilities: those in wheelchairs or using walkers or canes to get around, those whose eyesight is so poor that they can no longer drive and need special technology to be able to read, those with emphysema or other lung conditions requiring oxygen in order to breathe, or those whose dementia has reached the point where they require constant supervision.

The reality is much more complex. Disability, certainly for those of us age 65 and over, is generally not an either-or proposition, but a spectrum or continuum. After a certain point, the question isn’t whether one has some kind of disability, but what kind of disability one has and how its effects play out in daily life.

One example of a disability that may not be immediately apparent but that is nonetheless very real is the all-too-common enlarged prostate requiring twice-hourly trips to the washroom. Other examples include hearing difficulties that make it hard to hear in conversational situations where more than one person at a time is speaking and certain types of arthritis that don’t prevent one from walking but do make it hard to sit for long periods of time or to get up from low seats. Walking around in our midst are all sorts of folks fully capable of doing a good day’s work, but who could more easily pass through the proverbial needle’s eye than get up from the floor unassisted, or sit through a two-hour meeting without bathroom and stretch breaks.

What makes these partial disability issues more complex than the types of issues referred to in the first paragraph is that it isn’t always clear to the partially disabled individual whether he or she should acknowledge the partial disability, particularly in situations that might involve a request for help or accommodation. When do you play that “handicapped” card? Many of us (including yours truly) are feeling our way through a maze of ambiguity here.

To give just one example: the arthritis in my hips is almost certainly severe enough to entitle me to put a handicapped sticker on my car. But I have thus far refrained from doing so, largely because I don’t like the optics of driving into my tennis club with a handicapped sticker on my car. (Against all apparent good sense, I continue to play tennis as well as swim and dance, partly out of the fear that if I stop doing these things, my muscles and joints will atrophy and my condition will worsen).

Given that many people with partial disabilities aren’t always clear about acknowledging them, it’s hardly surprising that public policy hasn’t progressed very far in this area. The one notable exception is legislation concerning doorknobs, which are often a problem for boomers, particularly those who aren’t very big or who have issues with shoulder mobility. Various cities have long been addressing this problem for public buildings, requiring them to use accessible levers rather than knobs. Now the city of Vancouver has gone one step farther. Last November, it amended its building code to outlaw the use of doorknobs in all new buildings, including private homes. The ban became effective this March. A similar ban is being considered here in Halifax, NS, though no decision has been taken as yet.

With regard to most areas of life, however, partial disability remains a grey area. For instance, what to do about items placed on a bottom shelf 2" off the floor in the grocery store? (I avoid buying such items whenever possible, but when I absolutely must buy them, I will now ask a store clerk for help). At what stage of disability should one feel free, on an overcrowded bus, to ask a fully abled younger person to give up their seat? (I have thus far refrained from doing this, though many fully-abled people have given me their seats voluntarily). This list could go on. Complicating matters still further is the fact that certain types of partial or even near-total disability, notably those arising from severe arthritis of the knee or hip, may indeed be reversible (e.g., through joint-replacement surgery).

Normally, one adapts to such conditions by making changes to one’s living arrangements, such as buying furniture that’s easier to get in and out of or even moving to a one-storey building to avoid stairs. The potential reversibility of your condition raises the question of just how far you should go in modifying your surroundings. Does it make sense to move to a one-storey building when, in a year or two (or perhaps sooner) you will again be able to negotiate stairs with your new knee or hip? Here again, there are obviously no hard-and-fast rules. You must balance the inconvenience and expense of short-to-medium-term adaptations such as moving or replacement of hard-to-use furniture against the improvement in your quality of life that will result, almost immediately, from your being more in tune with your immediate surroundings.

Adding to the uncertainty (at least for those contemplating joint replacements) is the fact that one never knows exactly when one will be called in for surgery. I’ve been told I’ll receive one month’s notice when my name comes up on the hip replacement list. What one can tolerate for six months or a year may be quite different from what one can tolerate for two or three years. What assumptions should one make about the likely date of one’s procedure?

In short, the “answer” for how to deal with partial disability is that there aren’t many easy answers. Make no mistake: you are frequently in situations where you must make important decisions based on severely inadequate information, often decisions with significant cost implications that could have a major impact on your quality of life. The prime requisites for living with a partial disability, I’ve concluded after some years of trying to deal with one, are a high tolerance for ambiguity and a good sense of humour, something I don’t always find easy to maintain on cold, wet mornings when my knee sounds like the middle shelf of the hardware store every time I take a step.

To be continued! In the meantime, if grocery and drug stores could put their lowest shelves twelve inches off the ground instead of two, many boomers would be grateful. So would the store clerks who currently have to do our low bending for us



This article is another in a series by Jon Peirce, a retired professor and union representative and long-time free-lance journalist, on subjects of interest to boomers. Some of Jon’s previous work has appeared in such publications as The Globe & Mail, the Christian Science Monitor, the Ottawa Citizen, Books in Canada, the Toronto Star, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, and the Kingston Whig-Standard. Jon currently writes, teaches writing courses at the Nova Scotia Seniors’ College, and serves on the Advisory Committee of the Silver Economy Engagement Network, all of this while doing an M.A. in history at Dalhousie. He is a professional member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. His interests include tennis, swimming, improvisational dance, and cooking, and he has recently returned to the stage after a 46-year intermission, playing Judge Omar Gaffney in a Dartmouth Players production of Harvey. His second book, Social Studies; Collected Essays, 1974-2013, has just been published by Friesen’s Press in Victoria; his first book, Canadian Industrial Relations, originally published in 1999, is now in its third edition with Pearson Education Canada.

photo credit: wikicommons

Changing the paradigm of boomers and retirement

Editor's Note: Bevan Rogel is the president and founder of Encore Tampa Bay, an organization that helps Baby Boomers understand the exciting new stage of life development where anything is possible. This article was originally posted on the Encore Tampa Bay website.

Recently, Marc Freedman was honored with the Social Entrepreneur of the Year award at the World Economic Forum. Freedman is the founder of Encore.org (formerly Civic Ventures) and a primary thought leader for the encore social-change movement.

One of Freedman’s latest articles focuses on the confusion and ongoing contradictions of the “structural lag” that drastically changes lives related to work and retirement. Social institutions, organizations and public policy seem to be stuck in the “Del Webb era” of a life of leisure while at the same time, our country is experiencing a 50 percent increase in the percentage of Americans 65 and older continuing to work in some capacity.

For those stuck in the old paradigm, boomers that choose a life of leisure are viewed as a drain on our economy and society. On the other hand, the growing surge of older Americans staying in the workforce are viewed as “greedy geezers” occupying jobs some believe are better suited for younger workers.

"I believe that there is not a 'Silver Tsunami' here but a 'Silver Lining,'” Freedman said. “Never before have so many people had so much experience, time and capacity to put those assets to great use. It is all in how we look at this – we need to make a paradigm shift!"

I was invited to speak at the Spark Growth Leadership Conference in Bradenton, Florida. I participated in a panel on “Innovation: The Treasure Hunt of Talent." Mireya Eavey, executive director of CareerEdge, talked about how CareerEdge is leveraging community assets and matching those assets with industries that are still in need of older, experienced workers. Amy Rettig, senior vice president at Nielsen Media, explained how Nielsen capitalizes on the many generations in the workforce.

In preparing for this panel, I found numerous examples of organizations that are successfully engaging, recruiting and helping older workers transition into retirement. A recent survey by SHRM and AARP found that 60 percent of human resource executives are implementing new practices in all of the above areas. A Sloan Center of Work and Aging (Boston College) study described best practices such as workplace flexibility, retooling, phased retirement, job-role-shift programs, part-time, on-call and Encore on-call where retirees come back to do project work, consulting or mentoring.

There are also great examples of organizations making this paradigm shift right here in Tampa Bay. Patina Solutions is a place where seasoned professionals want to continue working in a fast, flexible way on an interim basis. Boomerswork provides services that can match boomers who are out of the workforce with businesses in need of high-level part time or project work.

It’s time to take a fresh look at this incredible opportunity that can benefit not only the people who are approaching this age but also the organizations that have the foresight to tap into this boomer talent.

Here are the fundamental keys to this social innovation:

Changing our perceptions of what work can look like for all generations.

Changing the paradigm for this stage of life – from one of seclusion and deterioration to one of generativity and positive aging.

Changing the language, the culture and policies that embrace this new windfall of talent in our community and organizations.

What are some examples of this paradigm shift in your organization? Join the conversation!

Seniors are most eager learners

By Jon Peirce

This Thursday afternoon, as I have done every Thursday afternoon since late April, I will walk into a small classroom at the Bloomfield Community Centre, where the Seniors’ College of Nova Scotia (SCANS) has its headquarters, and greet my class of 12 aspiring writers, all of whom are at least 50 and most of whom are well into their 60s or older. I may start off our two-hour session by giving a few pointers about writing, but as likely as not, we will proceed directly to the pieces themselves, moving either in direct or reverse alphabetical order.

The “rules of engagement” are simple. Students may write in any genre they wish—poetry, prose fiction, prose non-fiction. I’ve already had a children’s story, a children’s poem, and a scene from a play, and I expect more surprises in the two weeks we have left together. The only caveat is that pieces must be relatively short (preferably not more than 1,000 words long and definitely not more than 1,500 words, or 10 minutes’ reading time). The length restriction is necessary to give every student a chance to share in each class.

Each student reads his or her piece out loud. We then proceed to an open discussion and critiquing of the piece, which the author will usually have sent out to the class by e-mail a day or two before the class. I encourage students to be as positive as possible in their critiques, while still being honest, and to focus, in class, on big-picture issues such as structure, tone, and point of view, providing detailed criticism on matters such as grammar, spelling, and punctuation by e-mail rather than taking up class time with such matters.

Over the five weeks since the class started, I’ve been equally impressed by the variety of pieces produced by my students and by their diligence in producing them. Bear in mind that the Seniors’ College is a non-credit institution. Its courses have no formal assignments, no grades, no papers, and no exams. So people are writing simply for the love of it: because they want to write and have their pieces critiqued in a friendly, non-threatening environment by their fellow writers.

Even more impressive is my students’ commitment to the workshop. Attendance has averaged about 90 percent. Those who can’t make a class generally notify me in advance. This is a most pleasant and marked contrast to my experience, earlier in my career, teaching “standard-age” university students. There, attendance was often spotty, and getting a discussion going could be well-nigh impossible. After more years of that than I care to remember, I find it a pleasure to be teaching people who want to be there and who always come prepared to engage the subject.

The Writers’ Workshop, which is the fourth course I have taught for SCANS since the beginning of 2013, is just one of 24 courses SCANS currently offers. (Aside from the Bloomfield Centre in Halifax, SCANS courses are or have been offered at Keshen Goodman Library in Clayton Park and in Dartmouth, Bedford, Tantallon, Chester, Mahone Bay, Truro, and Liverpool). Among the other courses being offered this term are “Interesting Mathematics,” “Historical Dynamics of Clothes and Fashion,” and “Development of the Atlantic Provinces,” as well as courses in Japanese history, music appreciation, philosophy of art, art history, and an introduction to Islam. Like me, most of my fellow instructors have graduate degrees from major universities and have been full-time professors in the past. In addition, some have extensive practical experience in the fields in which they offer courses.

For example, the Japanese history instructor spent over a decade in Japan as a scholar and financial analyst. The music appreciation instructor taught music in the Halifax public schools for more than 30 years, and even in retirement has continued to conduct, perform, and compose and arrange music. And the instructor in “Historical Dynamics of War, Law & History,” a retired career legal officer with the Canadian Forces, was a member of the Commission of Experts appointed by the U.N. Security Council to investigate allegations of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

Who can take SCANS courses? The courses are open to all seniors (age 50 or over) living in Nova Scotia. A single annual membership fee of $135 allows you to take as many courses as you want (subject to class-size limitations) during the three semesters after you join. You may also attend any of the occasional special lectures, such as one held recently on Glenn Gould, take part in general membership meetings, and participate in making recommendations for courses.

SCANS was created in 2007 by a Task Force from the Association of Dalhousie Retirees and Pensioners. It started with just over 100 members and its initial offering was four courses. Since then, its membership has expanded at the rate of about 20 percent per year, and the College, as noted above, has begun offering courses in many centres around the province.[1]

SCANS is part of what appears to be a much broader movement to provide non-credit courses to older learners. In Cape Breton, Cape Breton University has had a similar organization in place since 2005, offering courses since 2005. In southern New Brunswick and northern Nova Scotia, Tantramar Seniors’ College offers the seniors of Moncton, Riverview, Port Elgin, Dorchester, and Shediac, N.B. and Amherst, N.S. unlimited courses for a yearly membership fee of $100. And a similar organization offers non-credit courses for seniors in Queens, Kings, and Prince Counties, P.E.I.

Nor are these ventures confined to Canada. The state of Maine, to give just one example, has a Senior College Network of 17 independent groups across the state, offering non-credit courses to those over age 50 for a small annual membership fee plus a modest tuition charge for each course.

The growing popularity of Seniors’ Colleges attests that an increasingly large number of boomers are interested in keeping their minds as well as their bodies active well into old age. Clearly non-credit education for seniors is an idea whose time has come!

This article is part of a series by Jon Peirce, a retired professor and union representative and long-time free-lance journalist, on subjects of interest to boomers. Some of Jon’s previous work has appeared in such publications as The Globe & Mail, the Christian Science Monitor, the Ottawa Citizen, Books in Canada, the Toronto Star, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, and the Kingston Whig-Standard. Jon currently writes, teaches writing courses at the Nova Scotia Seniors’ College, and serves on the Advisory Committee of the Silver Economy Engagement Network, all of this while doing an M.A. in history at Dalhousie. He is a professional member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. His interests include tennis, swimming, improvisational dance, and cooking, and he has recently returned to the stage after a 46-year intermission, playing Judge Omar Gaffney in a Dartmouth Players production of Harvey. His second book, Social Studies; Collected Essays, 1974-2013, is forthcoming from Friesen’s Press in Victoria; his first book, Canadian Industrial Relations, originally published in 1999, is now in its third edition with Pearson Education Canada.

[1] Information for this paragraph has been drawn from Melissa Shaw, “Seniors college experiences strong enrolment growth,” in Unews.ca, Feb. 11, 2013.

Boomers redefine retirement through encore careers

Baby boomers have been the trendsetters of society for decades, and what they want informs more changes than any generation has before. It makes sense that boomers should redefine retirement through encore careers. But a lot of people don't know what an encore career is or how the process works. The concept is working well for a lot of boomers. Here are a few reasons why:

A Backup Plan

Often boomers are the targets of layoffs because they tend to have the highest pay grades and are seen as having the least amount of working time left. If you think of it from the perspective of a 35-year-old boss, would you rather keep the trainable 23-year-old recent graduate or the 60-year-old boomer who may be perceived as out of step or behind the times?

For better or worse, layoffs and downsizing are still a part of the American corporate landscape. Many boomers who used to fear for their financial security have now found that encore careers in a new field or different positions in the same field can open up interesting opportunities to stay connected to the workforce. Employers are recognizing the value and expertise of boomers, too, opting for part-time or consulting assignments to boost areas of their businesses.


Building the New Three-Legged Stool

The old three-legged stool was Social Security, personal savings and a defined-benefit pension. Social Security benefits are not increasing alongside consumer prices and the entire program is running a deficit. Defined-benefit pensions are almost as extinct as the woolly mammoth. The national savings rate is near the lowest levels it has ever been, which makes encore careers the best way for seniors to build a new stool. Encore careers provide possibilities for part-time work, part-time entrepreneurial pursuits or even experimenting in career paths that you never even considered before, enabling boomers to let their savings to continue to grow.


Pursuing Your Passions

Encore careers let you retire from one workplace and start something entirely different. Perhaps you made a career in the sciences but you always felt that you had the charisma for sales, or maybe you considered being a programmer back in the '70s but didn't see a future in it at the time. While you can't live in the past, you can explore areas you are passionate about.


Enjoying New-Found Freedom

Working isn't always about exploring the path less traveled or keeping your head above water. Sometimes it's about meeting new people and having the freedom to enjoy yourself in new ways. You may have faced a lot of stress in your previous career, but the freedom of an encore career on your own terms opens up a lot of possibilities.

Learn more about being matched with employers seeking experienced talent for flexible employment opportunities.

photo credit: SalFalko via photopin cc