If you are finally back at work after a long unemployment, your life has changed.
In decades past, one may have had a job that had ebbs and flows. He worked when there was work, and got laid off when times were slow – only to be hired back when times improved.
In those days, jobs – particularly in the trades – didn’t go away. They sometimes went on vacation. Those who faced that situation often planned for it. More importantly, when they got hired back, it was often a better situation from what they had before.
For most professions, THOSE DAYS ARE GONE!
Today, if one gets laid off, often the job is never coming back. The person has to re-invent himself or herself. That can take time. You may know someone, even yourself, who has been out of work for months or years. As they look for jobs, they are discriminated against because they have been unemployed for so long. If they get another job, it is often for less money than they were making.
Wall Street Journal reporter Veronica Dagher talked to experts in the field and, in an article published March 2, 2014, offers advice to those who are finally working again after a long employment. In short, the six steps Dagher found in her research are: 1) Celebrate in moderation. Have a drink or an expensive cup of coffee, but don’t take a big vacation. 2) Set a new budget. A smaller salary means a reduced lifestyle. 3) Start saving and tackle debt. Bills may have drained your savings and increased your debt. Start building your savings and paying down debt. 4) Get a checkup. You’ve probably put your health on hold to save money. Start taking care of yourself again. 5) Catch up on retirement. You’ve probably drained any retirement account you may have had. Start building it back up. 6) Plan on your job going away again. Employers are constantly restructuring. They have to. You are just one reorganization, or one bad manager, away from the end of your career in certain fields.
If you are working, be thankful — no matter how bad your job seems to be. If your work situation is terrible, look to find something you can do part-time to help you get out of it. A second job may not be the answer you are looking for. There are oodles of opportunities out there to augment your income without having a traditional job. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You, and your friends who may be in the same boat, just might find a way to eventually walk out of miserable jobs with smiles on your faces.
Re-inventing oneself is not the same as being someone you aren’t. You can still be you, with all your beliefs, quirks etc. Re-inventing oneself means taking control of YOUR situation. You can’t stop your employer from downsizing or reorganizing. He may be very sad to have to let you go. Regardless, things happen and YOU have to deal with it. Often, that means changing priorities, learning new things and, most of all, being open to looking at new things.
Not everything out there is going to suit you. Sometimes, you have to take a job you hate to get you over an immediate financial hump. But, long term, the future is in your hands and you can achieve great things if you want to.
Here’s hoping that if you were out of work for a long time, that you’ve finally found a new job that suits you. If you are newly unemployed, check out some of those other opportunities out there while you are looking for a new job.
If you have a job you hate, or you have a job you fear is going to go away, start to re-invent yourself now. Spend your free time checking into some of the ways to pick up extra money. So, when, or if, the day comes that your boss tells you goodbye, you’ll be OK.
Or, better yet, you can tell your boss goodbye first, and leave smiling.
Peter
Tag Archives: retirement
GETTING OLDER? REIMAGINE YOUR LIFE
When we look at Jane Pauley, we think she has had a good life.
After all, she was the co-host of the “ Today” show and “Dateline NBC.” But, at age 63, her life is not done.
Pauley has written a book titled, “Life Calling: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life.” Reporter Kerry Hannon discussed the book in a Feb. 5, 2014, article in USA Today.
The book encourages Baby Boomers to look at life anew as they move into their 50s and 60s. Pauley’s book takes a look at career paths others have taken in the belief that you will learn from their stories, Hannon writes.
We are living longer. We are getting older. But that doesn’t mean we should think about packing it in, heading to the rocking chair and await death.
Sure, some employers are downsizing. Some see older workers as expensive and less productive, despite their experience. Perhaps you’ve reached your 50s or 60s, and your employer has said goodbye to you.
But Pauley’s book looks at that as a second chance. “We’ve been given a second chance – to do the thing we’d always wanted to do, or never had a chance before to do, or never imagined we could. I think of these as ‘trying times,’ a time to try new things,” Hannon quotes from Pauley’s book.
So getting the boot from your employer could be the best thing that ever happened to you, if you choose to look at it that way. Perhaps the message was to pursue your dream, spend more time on a favorite hobby – perhaps even turn it into an income stream.
You see, it’s not about circumstances, because most circumstances are out of your control. But you have absolute control over how you respond to those circumstances.
Getting older is one such circumstance. You can’t do anything to stop it. You can’t relive what was, in your mind, the best time of your life. You need to train your mind to believe that the best years of your life are ahead.
So what’s ahead for you, if you have passed the half-century mark of life? Perhaps it is starting your own business. Perhaps it is going back to school. Perhaps it is enjoying your children and grandchildren.
Whatever you decide, do it with joy. Do it knowing that the past has passed, and the future is bright.
Of course, some of you may not know what you will do next. Don’t approach that with angst. Approach it with optimism. Keep looking for the opportunity to be inspired. There are lots of great opportunities out there. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You’ll see a bunch of happy people of all ages pursuing their dreams.
Some people get bored in retirement. Others use retirement to pursue things they’ve always wanted to. Retirement is not a precursor to death. It can be an impetus for a new life.
Remember, too, that it may take time to find that new life. It took Pauley four years, Hannon writes. It’s been said that it’s not the success that matters. It’s the journey.
It also goes for younger people who find themselves at a crossroads – between jobs or downsized out. The modern world encourages constant invention and reinvention. You can accept circumstances as fate and die, or you can accept circumstances as another opportunity for reinvention.
As you get older, you can find a new you.
Peter
HUMP DAY: GET OVER IT!
The Geico insurance ad with the camel walking through the office asking everyone what day it is has gone viral.
You see, those who work a Monday through Friday schedule viewed Wednesday as “hump day,” because once Wednesday was over, you were “over the hump” toward the weekend.
Yes, we can be clock watchers, and sometimes, we need to be. But time is precious, and we don’t want to wish away any time. We don’t want to get old too soon. We want to stay young as long as we can, regardless of our current age.
Think of it this way. If Wednesday puts you over the hump toward the weekend, and that makes you happy, how sad are you on Sunday night, knowing that Monday morning is coming?
Some working folks love their jobs so much, it doesn’t matter what day it is. Others work weird schedules, and may have a different “hump day.”
Though many love what they do, most don’t love it so much that they dread their off time. We have families, friends, hobbies and fun activities that deserve our time. Those who love their work may never retire, because they’ll always want to be doing something related to what they love.
There are others for whom work is literally their life. They have few, if any, activities outside of their work. Can these folks truly be happy?
Still, others can’t wait to retire. They are doing jobs that are putting food on the table and roofs over their heads, but they long to be done with them. It’s becoming more difficult by the day to last out your employer until you are able to retire, so these folks are just praying they can hang on as long as possible.
But what if you are not yet retired, and the day of the week doesn’t matter to you? What if your work were done whenever it suited you?
With traditional jobs and employers, that’ usually not possible. But what if you could get there? How much would you sacrifice, and how hard would you work on your own time to make that happen?
If that idea intrigues you, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. Not everyone will want it, but if you want to get over the hump toward freedom, it might be for you.
Life has humps we need to get over. Some would like to get over them faster than others. Others can’t see any way to get over them quickly.
In whatever our activities, we need to realize that time is something you can’t recover, or go back to. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. If you have regrets, look at the future and find ways to do things you won’t regret.
Memories can be beautiful, but, generally, they can’t be relived. Waxing nostalgic can be amusing, but, usually, you can’t go back there.
We need to look toward the future. We need to have dreams. And, we need to think about how we are going to realize those dreams.
Not all things are possible, but most things are if we think about the right things, and act in a way that will get us where we want to go.
Once we get there, we won’t worry about “hump days,” for we will realize that all days are valuable and should not be wasted.
If life throws you a hump, just get over it!
Peter
30-SOMETHINGS SWEAT RETIREMENT: PART 2
Those in their late 30s today are more worried about retirement than those in the Baby Boom Generation, which is retiring, or on the verge of retiring, now.
A Pew Research Center survey, as reported by Hope Yen of The Associated Press, says that about 49 percent of those between 35 and 44 said they had little or no confidence that they will have enough money for retirement.
As discussed last week, time is on your side if you are in this group. There are steps you can take to stave off disaster. We talked about presuming your job will change and presuming any pension promises made to you will be broken. If neither happens, and you prepared for the worst, it’s a bonus for you.
But there are two other areas about which you should think if you are in this age group, and are worried about retirement.
Your spending habits. We talked last week about the “need” to keep up with all the latest technology. Do your gadgets last you a long time, or are you constantly trading up for the newest stuff? If something works for you, even though it may be “old” technology, sticking with it may help your retirement. The money you’d spend on upgrades will be more useful working for you so you can retire on your terms.
COFFEE: A RETIREMENT BOOSTER?
But there are other spending habits to think about. Lots of folks like Starbucks, or other premium-priced coffee. When your grandparents or parents were your age, coffee was coffee. It might have cost a dime in your grandparents’ day, and up to 50 cents in your parents’ youth. For that dime, or half-buck, that you spent in a coffee shop, you got all the coffee you wanted. Unlimited refills were yours. Today, you pay $2 for a cup of coffee. Many places still give you unlimited refills, but that idea is trending out. Starbucks never gives free refills. Other places are charging, say, 50 cents for every refill. Sure, the coffee shops and restaurants need to make a living, but a cup of coffee a day from a shop can add up to real money over a year. Do the math: $2, multiplied by, 250 workdays (5 days a week over 50 weeks) is $500. Put $500 a year into your retirement account starting at age 35, and if you work until you are 65 (30 years) is $15,000 in contributions over that time.
Say those contributions that money doubled every 10 years in your retirement account. In the first 10 years, $5,000 in contributions doubled to $10,000. That $10,000, plus the second 10-year contributions of $5,000, doubled becomes $30,000. That $30,000, plus $5,000 in contributions, doubles to $70,000. That’s not much for a retirement nest egg, but you augmented your nest egg by that amount, just by skipping the daily cup of coffee on the way to work.
Remember, your grandparents made a pot of coffee at home before work, and put it into a Thermos that kept it hot all day. You could buy your own bags of whatever coffee you like, and try putting it into a Thermos. Sure, it’s a pain in the neck to carry a Thermos, and your friends may laugh, but you may have the last laugh at retirement.
Finally, your free time. We all love free time to watch TV, play sports, enjoy our families etc. But what if you took some of that free time to work on your fortune? Retirement would not only not be an issue, you might even be able to retire VERY YOUNG! There are many ways to leverage your time into activities that could produce a lifetime, residual income. To check out one of the best ways, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. It’s thinking outside the box, but if you are still young, and fretting about retirement, you have to think of alternatives you’d never thought of before.
It used to be risky to start a business. But today, starting a business appears less risky than trying to keep a good job for 30 or 40 years. If you can keep your regular job for as long as you can, and start a business on the side, you may have the best of all worlds.
This is not your grandfather’s, or your father’s, job market. Like the gadgets we like, jobs change. Companies are finding ways to hire fewer people, no matter the skill level. Pensions are changing. The defined-benefit pensions, paid for entirely by the employer, are disappearing quickly. Employees have to contribute toward their own retirement.
If you are between 35 and 44 years old, you have time. Little changes in how you live and work could make the difference in when and how you retire. Let your friends laugh at you. Retirement planning is no laughing matter. For if you do what you can for you, you’ll have the last laugh.
Peter
30-SOMETHINGS SWEAT RETIREMENT: PART 1
If you are 30-something, are you worried about your financial security in retirement?
A survey by the Pew Research Center, as reported by Hope Yen of The Associated Press, says Americans in their late 30s are more worried about retirement than those of the Baby Boom Generation.
The 30-somethings should be concerned. However, they have time to do the right things.
If you are in this group, think about the following: your job, your pension (if you have been promised one), your lifestyle, your spending habits, your free time.
First, your job. No matter how “good” your job is, it may not last forever. Your forebears saw complete industries go from thriving to dead – or at least on life support — in a generation. If you have or had grandparents who worked in a factory, is that factory still around? Remember, your grandparents thought that job was as good as gold, and it probably was FOR THEM. But they may have lived to see those jobs disappear – something they never expected when they were your age.
No matter what industry you are in now, EXPECT it to change. New technology is making the way we do things differ by the day. What you are doing now may not even resemble what you may be doing as you approach retirement. Can you live with that? Will you see the changes BEFORE they hit you, so you can act accordingly? It’s difficult to anticipate change you don’t know is coming, but regardless of how your job, or industry, changes, your expectation of change will serve you well.
A PENSION FOR CHANGE
Second, your pension. If you are lucky enough to have a pension as part of your employment package, count your blessings. However, at this stage of your life, your pension is little more than a promise, unless you are contributing your own money toward it. We are seeing pension promises broken every day, and those older than you are having retirement planning disintegrate before their eyes.
Do you have a parent who is at or near retirement age but has to keep working because everything they’d worked for has all but disappeared? From your vantage point, you can learn from this. Start now to save for your retirement. How YOU prepare your own resources for retirement will make a difference in how and when you will be able to retire. Remember, the retirement planning that you do, with your own money, can’t be taken from you. It can go up and down with the markets, but your own money and efforts are yours forever. It’s a promise you can keep for yourselves.
Promises from employers can be broken. If your parents have or had an employer that is keeping its pension promise, they are very lucky. Even unionized or government pensions are coming under scrutiny. If you are employed in a unionized or government environment, and you are in your 30s, don’t expect the promises made to you today to hold up at, say, age 60. If you plan that things will go away, and they don’t, that’s a bonus for you.
LIFESTYLE CAN CREATE WEALTH
Third, your lifestyle. In this age of ever-changing gadgets, people wait in long lines for fancier phones, etc. People want what’s hot. They want it even though they know that the minute they get it, something else will make it obsolete. When your grandparents and parents were young, they may have bought a TV or a radio, or a stereo system. They expected to use it for decades without replacing it. Today, people replace their gadgets annually, if not more frequently, so they can have the latest, trendy thing. If you have a gadget that works for you, think long and hard before replacing it. Your friends may laugh at you for having “old” technology, but you’ll have the last laugh when you put the money that you would have spent on the newest gadget into your retirement fund.
We’ll talk more about spending habits and free time next week. Meanwhile, as you ponder your retirement and fret about what it will look like, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. This may be one way you can put your mind at ease when it comes to retirement. Who knows? It might even put you on the road to retiring EARLY!
Time is on your side. Things you do – or don’t do – today may determine the type of retirement you will have. Think hard, and choose wisely.
Peter
YOUR PENSION? A LIABILITY FOR YOUR EMPLOYER
If you have been fortunate enough to work for an employer long enough to qualify for a pension, and your boss offers you one big check when you leave, in exchange for the smaller – and everlasting — monthly checks, would you take it?
J. Scott Trubey, a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has found that many big Atlanta companies are doing that. His report was published in the Oct. 14, 2012, edition.
On its face, it appears that the employers are bearing a big cost now, in lieu of mounting costs later. If the companies fund their pension plans, they won’t have to contribute nearly as much in the future by paying workers off now. If the numbers work well for the company, that’s all well and good.
But should the workers take the offer? There are several schools of thought. First, if you are ill and not expected to live a long life, you might think about taking the big payment now to cover your medical costs, presuming your employer doesn’t provide retiree insurance beyond Medicare. Of course, that would leave less for your spouse, if you are able to cover him or her in your pension. Then again, if you are a healthy, active retiree, expecting to live a long life in retirement, those monthly checks would be very nice to have for as long as you live. And, if you are fortunate to live a long and healthy life, you’d have collected so much more than that lump sum over time.
But let’s look at things a different way. Obviously, if you are not a careful money manager, or are not a savvy investor, or feel that having that much money in your pocket at once is too much temptation to spend frivolously and quickly, then the monthly pension payouts are best for you.
WHAT COULD $200,000 AT ONCE DO FOR YOU?
But if you have some financial smarts, or get good, reliable financial advice, you could invest that money with a return greater – even much greater – than your pension plan would get. To use round numbers, a $200,000 lump-sum payment in your hands could double every five years, whereas it might double every 10 years in the pension plan’s overly cautious investments. Naturally, pension plans have to be careful with their investments. But having the money in your hands give YOU power to invest it as YOU would want, with potentially more attractive returns.
Using those same numbers, if the $200,000 lump-sum investment doubled every five years, and you lived 20 years in retirement, you’d have a $3.2 million nest egg if you didn’t touch it. If that’s not practical – you need the money to live the retirement of your dreams – you can live off the returns of your money. An 8 percent annual return is not unheard of in the investment world, so you would make $18,000 a year to live on – and still have your lump sum. Compare that to your monthly benefit, multiplied by 12.There may not be much difference, or there could be a big difference in your favor.
The bonus: you would ALWAYS have that lump sum in its entirety working for you, no matter how long you lived. Just think if you took a part-time job you enjoyed. You might be able to put, say, $5 every paycheck from that job into that account to augment it. If you are money-savvy, you’d been saving all your life. It would be no big deal to keep it up.
If you already have decent savings over and above your pension and Social Security, and you add that lump sum to augment your account, how much more interest, dividends and capital gains would you make? Would your monthly pension matter?
So, if you are in a position to take a lump-sum payment in exchange for your monthly pension, give it a lot of thought. Get some good, trustworthy advice from someone other than a representative of your employer. Think about it from the perspective of control. If you like to control your own destiny, the choice you would make might be different from a person who doesn’t want the worry of financial management, or who budgets based on knowing what he gets every month.
Either choice has risks. You risk market performance with the lump sum, and you risk pension plans going belly-up with the monthly payment. Many pension plans are in trouble today and, even if you worked for a government agency or a very solvent company, that pension might not always be what you think it will be.
One more idea: what if you took the lump sum and invested a small portion of it into something that would give you a potentially substantial residual income that would dwarf your monthly pension? There are several ways to do that. To check out one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau.
Most of all, if you get that choice,be thankful. So many people work hard and have NO pension. If you are young, don’t PRESUME you’ll get a pension, even if your employer promises it. Lots can change over time.
Peter
A DREAM RETIREMENT OR DREAMING YOU CAN RETIRE?
At age 45, some years ago, Denise McColister felt very secure in her job. She believed she would retire comfortably at 62.
Then, her husband became disabled. Their house, which was paid for, had to be leveraged to pay for his care. So now, at 55, she’s working a part-time call-center job. There is no retirement in sight.
McColister’s story was one of several told in an article by David Markiewicz, in the Sept. 23, 2012, edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Over the years, retirement has evolved. Decades ago, workers longed for the day when their pensions, Social Security and retirement savings could be pooled into a comfortable life in the last years of life. They’d spent many years of hard labor and this was their reward.
They combined what their employers, their government and their own diligence did for them over the years to reach their dream. They hoped they would have enough good years of life, without sickness, disability or ordinary ravages of age, to travel, enjoy their hobbies or just relax with family and friends.
Today, the Baby Boomers look at retirement differently. If they are lucky, they have a pension, they have, or will have, Social Security and, if they were smart, a nest egg of savings and investments. But, presuming they are healthy, they can, and want to, still work at something that they can do largely on their own terms, so there is time to enjoy “retirement.”
The economy, however, has produced a number of folks like McColister who are not working at a job because they WANT to. They are working because they HAVE to. They are in this predicament through no fault of their own. The economy, or some other life catastrophe, has put them in a position in which, as Markiewicz quotes McColister, they will be working “until I am called home.”
If you are at or near retirement age, hopefully you have things in place that will allow you to enjoy some kind of “retirement,” or at least get you out of the rat race. If you are looking for something that will help in this regard, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. This vehicle could be the financial solution you are looking for, if you see yourself working until you die. Despite the ravages of a horrible economy over the last several years, there are ways out there to generate income. This is one of the best.
STILL YOUNG? START THINKING NOW!
If you are young, and not yet thinking about retirement, start now to prepare for that day. Check out a way you can work full-time at your job, and part-time on your fortune. Put a little money away each paycheck, and don’t touch it until you reach the age you want to retire.
Of course, should you be hit with a layoff or some other calamity,that may be easier said than done. Still, you must prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Bad things happen to good people. Having multiple streams of income will help cushion the blows. We must presume that promises made to us, either by employers or government, will NOT be kept. If we do what we can do to prepare for trouble, and it never comes, we are that much ahead of the game. We also have to learn not to blame ourselves, or others, if misfortune comes. If we’ve prepared for the worst, we can use our energy to deal with misfortune, rather than retaliate against whomever or whatever we believe caused it.
What should you do now? First and foremost, don’t presume anything, other than YOU having control over your adversity. Secondly, think about creating multiple streams of income. If you do that, it won’t matter much what happens to you. You’ll be able to deal with it comfortably, without the angst and stress McColister and others face.
The greatest moment of your life is being able to leave a job that has consumed you, on your terms, with a smile on your face. Then, to quote former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson in the AAG reverse mortgage ad, “live the life you’ve dreamed.”
Peter