It's 2025: Time to Unretire

The Five Steps for Getting Back to Work, Starting Your Own Business

The tipping point for you could be 2025. Those supposed LCOL (low cost of living) locations for retirees aren’t so low cost anymore.

For instance, in retirement mecca Arizona fixed expenses, especially in what it costs to keep a roof over your head, keep escalating. Tucson has been the second highest location in America for rent increases. Just about everything else is going up too.

So, for almost half of retirees has come the Ah-Ha Moment: “I have to bring in more income.” For you, that’ll be either through returning to work or starting a business.

The First Step

The turmoil about the decision to unretire is over. You can exhale.

Now you have to take an audit of what you can put on the market to get work or to sell through operating your own business.

Since you might be rusty in thinking along those lines a quick way back into that sort of mindset is this: Read and analyze help-wanted ads. Those are easily available through Craigslist Jobs. Just key in “Craigslist – Sites.” For each state and each city will pop up a large number of categories of work, ranging from customer service to security to business management.

Those are among the skills needed. Do you have any of them? What you did in your former career may or may not figure in. Other types of experience also might lead to work. What you wind up doing could be as a special events coordinator, expertise you picked up during volunteer work organizing fundraisers.

As for a startup, explore where there’s a gap in products or services. No fresh produce? That’s your retail business. Your retirement community has no public transportation. You can provide rides to the doctors and do on. Careerists in the neighborhood pine about leaving their dogs alone during the day. You create a day care center for dogs.

The Second Step

If it’s a job or gig you want or even to freelance, you’ll need a resume. Since you haven’t worked in a while the best format is the Functional Resume. That highlights skills, not a work history. That masks the gap in a work history.

Of course, you’ll leave off dates for the work experience you had as well as any education and training. Unless advanced degrees are directly related to a certain job function, keep the list to the BA/BS. Otherwise you could be perceived as over-qualified or expecting high compensation.

Overall, all job-search materials – resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles – have changed significantly in the past few years. For instance, it’s imperative to use certain keywords to get past the AI screeners. Fortunately, what you need to know is available on the internet. One tool is ChatGPT. You can prompt, for instance, “Essentials for a cover letter for a job in customer service.”

The most promising approach to starting a business is to go niche or even a niche within a niche. An influencer I coach restricted her focus to reaching out to mothers who have lost children. Another unretired, who had been a chef, is considering providing social media services to restaurants.

The Third Step

This is the attitude-adjustment piece. What you need is work, initially any work. Then you go on from there for more appropriate or better work. There is the old adage: Nothing gets you work like having work.

Realize that this is post-career. The big money and the status might belong to another life. Of course, what you’re doing can create a whole new career path. You take a part-time clerical job in a substance abuse recovery center. Eventually you become a certified counselor in that field.

For your startup you’ll have to be entrepreneurial. But you don’t have to set out to be a builder of an empire such as Jeff Bezos. Depending on what you learn about the market you could be continually revising your menu of products/services.

The Fourth Step

There has been a proliferation of platforms for applying for full-time/part-time jobs, gigs and freelance assignments. They range from Indeed to Upwork to TaskRabbit. Also, organizational websites will post opportunities. But you’ll probably land the best leads for work by just letting everyone know you’re available for whatever.

That also applies to your startup. Tell everyone in-person about the enterprise. Research also what promotional tools you’ll need, ranging from a website to social media to creating a newsletter. For low-cost help you can put a help-wanted on Craigslist, Upwork or TaskRabbit.

The Fifth Step

This is about both having the right attitude – patience/determination – and being willing to hop on a learning curve.

In this volatile economy there are a high number of applicants for each opening. You’re only one among them. So, keep applying and keep letting people know that you’re looking.

Say 250 apply for one job. If you’re fortunate you’ll be among the four to six who actually receive an invitation to interview. A more precise figure is that only 8.3 percent of applicants proceed to the interview stage.

If it’s in person, you have seven seconds to make an impression. That will represent a composite of your appearance, facial expression, body language, tone of voice, word usage and projection of confidence and enthusiasm.

Essentially the job interview is a sales call. You focus on what’s the pain point, that is what the organization needs to solve a problem. You present yourself as that perfect solution.

If it’s via video you’ll be responsible for not only presenting your expertise but also fundamental social skills such as looking straight into the camera and simulating an in-person interaction. Some of those are evaluated by an algorithm so you have to know beforehand what those hiring are really evaluating. Here’s a guide.

Post interview you keep analyzing what you assess you did right and wrong to move the dial toward an offer. If turned down you can ask for feedback why you weren’t chosen.

Much Changes

A life consists of many moving parts. They intersect with each other. Once you modify one part that’ll affect others. The return to work can alter your relationships with those remaining retired, how you feel about yourself and even your ability to absorb new information. Unretiring can actually be a whole fresh start.