Retirement is a life change that can cause surprising health changes. People who retire are more likely to struggle with depression and isolation and are at an increased risk of having a heart attack.
In fact, the risk increases by almost 50% higher than that of people who are still working. But senior citizens that continue on with work as they grow older, maintain better health as well as enjoy other benefits.
Why Senior Citizens Should Work
Working helps keep you healthier because it’s directly tied to your happiness. In fact, studies have shown that senior citizens who remain in a job have an increased level of happiness.
The key to that happiness is found in your daily interaction with other people. Being around other people on a regular basis helps give you a solid social network that’s vital to your emotional well being.
Having something that you need to do every day helps pass the time. Besides the interaction that you’ll gain from going to work every day, you’ll also reap other benefits.
Staying active with work can help with the physical aspect of growing older. Retirement can sometimes cause people to sit and not do as much physically. This can lead to worsening health problems, such as causing arthritis prone joints to stiffen more than they normally would.
There’s also a psychological side to working. Keeping busy with a new career change can help stimulate cognitive function. Studies have shown that senior citizens who maintain the psychological stimulation they receive from working fare better mentally than those who don’t.
Having a career after retirement can give senior citizens a sense of purpose and a support system with the people that you work with. Plus, even though you might not need more cash to help you pay the bills, having some extra money can be certainly come in handy.
If you’re physically able to, you might want to consider a second career after retirement. You can plan this while you’re at your current job and are approaching your retirement date.
When retirement arrives, many senior citizens find that instead of looking forward to that day, they now have a lot of empty hours to fill. They realize that contrary to what they once thought, they’re not really happy that they’re not working anymore.
For those people who are newly retired and the transition has been difficult and affected you emotionally, you might want to consider a second career. Though there are plenty of jokes about a spouse being around the house all the time once the job ends, the retirement years can actually be ones that bring on loneliness if you’re in a relationship.
You might have retired, but your spouse is still working. Rather than trying to fill the hours, having another career could help you in other ways. For those who are in their senior citizen years and have experienced the loss of a beloved partner, retirement can be extremely difficult.
Finding a second career can help you to get through the emptiness and the grief you might be battling. Stress and depression can wreak havoc on your health, so it’s best to get social interaction and feel useful in life for anti aging reasons, too.
What Type of Job Is Right For You?
When it comes to retirement, you might have a mental image of older people working as hospital volunteers. While that’s certainly an option for you, and volunteering can give you some social interaction, it’s not a second career.
What you’ll want to do is to take a look at the skills you currently have that you can leverage into a second career. You don’t have to work in the exact same field that you were in before retirement, but you can use the skills to help companies that need your experience.
Consulting is a great job for a senior citizen. The work isn’t demanding and the hours are flexible. What you’re giving to others is the benefit of the knowledge you’ve accumulated over the years.
Many companies want someone to come in and consult on a per project basis. If you were a licensed dietician before you retired, you can work as a nutritional consultant a few hours a day for a doctor’s office or for your local hospital.
You’ll be able to help patients learn about healthy meal planning, which can be especially helpful for people who have to follow a certain diet. You can also turn this skill into teaching nutritional classes at weight loss centers and more.
Needing help with independence is something that a lot of senior citizens are looking for. You might be able to be more mobile than others in your same age bracket might.
If you’re in good health and are able to drive, you can opt to provide a delivery service. Or you can work as part of a private car for hire service to take elderly people who can no longer drive back and forth on their errands or doctor appointments.
If you’re able to do home repair jobs such as installing a faucet, you can find work as a handyman. All that’s required for that is some knowledge of home repair and the skills to accomplish the tasks.
You can take courses from your local home improvement store if you need to. There’s a big need for elderly people who want someone trustworthy to come and fix the things they can no longer take care of.
If you worked in the financial field before you retired, you can offer your financial planning services to people in need. This is something that a lot of young couples are looking for and you can work either as a freelance financial planner or you can find work with a business.
You can also branch into bookkeeping or work as a payroll clerk if you have a background in the financial field. For people who have an in-depth knowledge of tax preparation, there are plenty of people looking for help in that area.
While it’s busier during tax season, you can still offer tax services to companies and self-employed people all year long. There are many large tax businesses who use the services of those who can do tax preparation.
You can build up a clientele easily of individuals or of businesses. Senior citizens who have experience in education can work as a tutor, as a substitute teacher, a teacher’s aid or – depending on your degree – even take a second career as a teacher.
If you have a teaching degree, you can also work teaching certain classes at your local college. If you have a sports background, you can look for a job as an assistant coach or coach with a school or learn how to referee for children’s or minor league sports teams.
Some stadiums have positions for ushers who help people find their seats. You would have to check the qualifications that are necessary to apply for a position with a youth or adult sports organization.
Senior citizens that don’t have any trouble getting around can apply to become a tour guide. This is a great job that will offer plenty of social interactions and it’s perfect for those who enjoy meeting new people.
You can lead tours inside places such as museums or on walking tours of your city. The hours are easy and the pay is good. To find a lead on a job like this, you only have to search for your city and state and add the word tours after it.
That will bring up a list of companies you can apply with. You can become a research specialist. Many companies need help with research. Some of these companies could be a law firm, a historical society, a library, a non-profit organization and more.
If you come from a background in sales and you enjoy talking to people, you might consider a career as a travel agent. The work is not physically demanding and you can find a job in a host of various places.
There are privately owned travel agencies looking for agents, franchised travel agencies or hotels that hire senior citizen agencies. You can even work as a travel agent from home if you prefer.
To work as an agent, you would need to have a good working knowledge of how to use a computer to make bookings as well as search for destinations. You would also need to be organized.
If you’d like to work as a travel agent but you don’t have any computer skills, that can easily be remedied by taking classes to get up to speed. For those who were employed as a nurse or in the health care field before retirement, you can find a new career as a home care health aid.
There are a lot of families who are searching for someone to help out with an aging loved one as well as businesses looking to add employees to their health care worker roster.
Senior citizens that are experienced in computer repair can easily find work either in offering tech support, in retail technology repairing computers that are dropped off or, they can start a second career by repairing computers as a home based business.
One question that comes up often is what if you have something that you’d like do, or you dream of working in a particular field but you don’t have the right degree to do it.
If you’re afraid of trying because you think that you might end up in college for additional time just to change careers, that’s not always the case. While certain fields do require a degree, some of them don’t.
In many cases, your past work experience will trump the degree. But if there’s something that you really want to go for, you can take classes online to become familiar with what’s current in the field.
You can also hire yourself out as a trainee in the field that you want to work in. Many businesses will take on an apprentice and teach you what you need to know so that you learn while you’re working.
Solo Entrepreneurial Online Careers for Senior Citizens
If you prefer to stay at home and start your second career, there’s no reason why you can’t do that. There are plenty of online careers you can start. You can use your knowledge in a subject to start a blogging career.
You can choose subjects to talk about that people want to know. By offering your advice and expertise, you’re giving them something of value. Often, blogging can turn into a small online community as it grows.
The way that you can earn money through blogging is once your blog has a medium to high amount of daily visitors, you can start to allow the placement of ads on your site.
You’ll earn money through the ads. Plus, you can recommend products that you would normally use and link those products back to a site where they can buy it and you earn a commission.
You can sell products through online shops. These can be items that you make or ones that you have made up specifically for your shop. The online store will take care of invoicing the customer and collecting payment.
All you have to do is send out the item that was purchased. These items can be things like crafted wearable items such as hats, scarves, baby blankets and more.
Or, you can sell photos or handmade cards. As long as there’s a market for your item, it will sell. If you have writing and grammar skills, then you can start an online business as a freelance writer and there are many ways that you can write.
You can sell articles to magazines – both print and online. You can write for websites, for bloggers, or for businesses. You can sell resumes to help college students land their first job.
Or you can write up a resume for people who want to change jobs. You can create an information booklet or an eBook and put that up for sell online to help people learn how to do what it is that you know how to do.
Web design is a big business that’s easy to start up if you have the skills. There is a big variety of people and businesses that are always needing a new website, or have a current website that needs updating.
If you’re good with art, you can become a graphic artist and sell art prints or design book covers for individuals who want to self-publish or you can design covers for publishing companies.
You can also start a virtual assistant business. A person who becomes a virtual assistant can assist with many different business needs for a variety of different jobs.
For example, you can offer services as a VA in the creative field or you can help those who work in the technical field. You’ll be handling the tasks they don’t have time for, such as customer service or publishing.
The Application and Interview Process
Applying for a new career and going through the interview process can be nerve wracking, regardless of how young or how old you are. A lot of senior citizens believe that their age will make them less likely to be hired, but that’s not true.
Many businesses prefer to hire senior citizens to younger people. Bring in an updated resume that highlights all of your skills that will help the new company you want to work for.
You’ll want to make sure that your personality shines. Be aware that since this is the age of technology, one thing that a lot of employers will look at is an online presence.
You’ll want to make sure that your online presence is a good one and there’s nothing embarrassing online. Research the company that you plan to apply for a job with.
You’ll want to know what it is that they value in employees. Those key words can help you be able to build some interest in hiring you. On the application, make sure that whatever it is the company is looking for is what you highlight on your resume.
Because it can be easy to be too close to something we want, it’s a good idea to have a friend read over your application. Think of the application as a great opportunity to sell yourself.
During the interview process, you’ll also want to be ready with an answer as to what it is that you can contribute to the company if you’re hired. Be able to tell the interviewer why he or she should choose you out of the pile of other applicants.
Don’t be afraid to let your life experiences and your work expertise shine through here. It’s okay to talk about your work accomplishments here. Instead of giving a vague indication of what you’ve done, you’ll want to give the interviewer ways that hiring you can cause the company to see an increase in profits or production.