St. Louis Business Journal
Working longer at a job you enjoy is an alternative to retirement

By Anna Navarro

April 2004 - Working past age 65 is increasingly common among older individuals. And many of them are engaging in late career changes unprecedented in prior generations.

In the past, dreams of retirement have kept many workers in their 50's and 60's in jobs that paid well, but they intensely disliked and found stressful. Their thinking went something like this: "If I can only hang on for a few more years, all this suffering will be over. Then I can retire and live the good life".

The new approach among some of today's older workers is to find jobs they enjoy so much they are willing to do them longer, even if they pay somewhat less. This enables them to delay drawing on their retirement funds, and allows more time for their savings to compound, thus reducing the total nest egg they need for retirement.

Meredith was a senior vice president of human resources and in her early 50's. Over the last several years she'd gotten a series of promotions and her compensation had increased significantly. There was even a good possibility she could retire at 60. But she really hated the company and her boss. And she was having to enforce corporate policies which she believed were unfair.

We did a crash course on figuring out what she ideally wanted in a work situation, and explored several different career directions. As a result, she determined that she wanted to start a business that specialized in recruiting board members for medium and large companies.

After a year, she was making 80% of what she'd made previously. But the real payoff was that she really liked her work and could imagine herself enjoying it well into her 70's. Because she was the owner, she could see ways to adapt her business over time to fit her aging process. And she was building an asset she could sell as she grew the business.

Albert was a senior vice president and general counsel of a bank that had been acquired by a larger bank holding company. He had fared well in the change, could probably stay around for another seven years and collect on a generous retirement plan. But the bureaucracy imposed by an out-of-town headquarters was choking the enjoyment out of his work.

We worked together to examine his past life and work experiences. He had actually enjoyed his prior work as a lawyer. He liked to teach and had taught several classes as an adjunct law professor. He was also a painter of huge canvasses and longed to have chunks of time off to paint.

As these parts of himself came to light, we began to explore the possibilities of becoming a full-time law professor with summers off so he could paint.

He is now an associate professor of business law in an undergraduate business program. The pay is lower than what he had earned at the bank, but there was no mandatory retirement age and several of his colleagues were over 70 and still much valued members of the faculty.

A few people who make this kind of late stage career change to go back to a "dream job" they felt they had to give up earlier.

Moira had risen to being the publisher of a weekly newspaper in her community. But there came a point when the demands of managing both the business and the editorial aspects of the paper seemed overwhelming. She had a scant four years to go to retirement. But instead of hanging on, she resigned her post and went back to being a reporter, with the proviso that she be allowed to continue past the usual retirement age as long as her performance met standards.

For the next eight years she enjoyed being a reporter, a job she'd really liked in her early years and given up because of the better status and bigger paycheck of being in management. Though she made less money, she loved the day-to-day work of reporting.

Every one of the individuals I've described went through a careful process of reflecting before making these decisions. We thought through what they needed, conceptualized solutions and reality tested them before taking action.

There is no one best strategy for handling the transition from work to retirement. For some, early retirement may be the best solution. But for others who can craft work that is enjoyable each and every day, continuing to work well past the traditional retirement age may offer an excellent alternative.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that trains independent career strategists and consults with individual clients.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.