Lay the Groundwork Now
Staying employable at 60 means starting to plan in your 40s.
This is not some obscure future concern you can afford to file away and think about when you near your 60s. Deborah Russell, director of workplace issues for AARP, suggests some healthy paranoia could work to your advantage. “Imagine your boss walks in today and says you’re no longer needed.” If that sets off panic, you’re clearly not prepared. “Reality is that we are all expendable at any time. That’s just a fact. So the question is: do you have a Plan B ready?” says Russell. That comes down to constantly assessing the job market in your field, and making sure that if you landed on the job market tomorrow, your skills and training would be exactly in sync with what recruiters and hiring managers are looking for.
It’s also a time to shift some of your career energy from building a reputation to marketing that reputation. “In your 20s and 30s your head is down and you are working like crazy to prove yourself and build your expertise, but it’s important to start taking the time in your 40s to build relationships outside your office, too,” says John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an executive outplacement firm. “Those relationships are what you will tap in your 50s and 60s. You can’t wait until then to start building them.”
What Not to Do
Get Pigeonholed
Expertise is great, but not when it lands you in a professional pigeonhole. The biggest risk is developing a highly specialized skill or role at one employer that is not necessarily valued — or needed — by other employers. Sound ominously familiar? Push to get in on other projects or transferred to other divisions so that you can broaden your experience. If you do some job hopping in your 30s and 40s — and who doesn’t? — make it a priority to take your expertise into new industries. Just because you are in marketing for health care today doesn’t mean your next job needs to be in health care; venture out into marketing in another field. That not only broadens your experience, but when you find yourself job hunting in your 50s and 60s, you’ve got a great selling point: experience at transferring skills to new industries.
Work Out to Work Longer
Reduce the risk you won’t be able to stay on the job.
About 20 percent of people in their late 50s and 60s have a health issue or disability that makes it impossible for them to continue working. While there’s no warding off many diseases, there is plenty in your control. Hit the gym, curb your McDonald’s enthusiasm, and kick that nicotine habit once and for all, and you are giving yourself far better odds you will be hale, hearty, and employable in your 60s. There’s also the potential benefit that a well-tended-to you will keep your retirement health care costs in check. “Take good care of yourself and you will be a lot happier when you are 75, and you could cost yourself a lot less,” says Wharton professor Olivia Mitchell, director of the Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement.
Nitty Gritty
What Medicare Won’t Cover
Think again if you expect Medicare to cover all your retirement health care costs. The Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) estimates that a 65-year-old couple retiring in 2018 will need about a half million dollars to cover Medigap, Medicare Part B and Part D premiums, and other out-of-pocket costs for the duration of their lives. And that presumes their prescription drug costs fall at the national median. If that couple falls into the top 10 percent for prescription drug costs, their total out-of-pocket tab increases to more than $1 million.
Stay Engaged
Keep your head in the game.
Recognize that when you slide into your 50s you are in a treacherous employment zone. The finish line is coming into view and, though you’re not entirely checked out, you may not be as hungry to make your mark as you were at 25. That’s got to change.
To stay employed in your 50s — and, just as important, in your 60s — requires staying engaged. Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, suggests you spell out your goals with your boss. “You need to get in there and make it clear that you want to keep working for another 10 years or however long, and you want to be considered for every long-term project. And then you need to sell yourself.”
That means you are front and center volunteering for strategic planning committees or projects. No coasting allowed; you are all about pushing yourself, your division, and your company forward with proactive ideas and initiatives, just like you did 25 years ago. “When you are older you need to fight through the inherent stereotypes that older workers are less creative and innovative,” says Sanjiv Kumar, managing director of the Human Resource Management practice at Buck Consultants.
It’s not just perceptions; it’s often blatant age bias. One study of on-the-job training found that workers over the age of 55 were far less likely to receive on-the-job training than younger workers. Of course, you want to make a stink if that’s happening to you, but you can’t use it as an excuse either. “Whether your current employer subsidizes it or not, it’s incumbent on you to get the training to stay relevant,” says AARP’s Russell. “Of course, it’s also the responsibility of the employer to provide the training, but you can’t give up if it’s not offered. The only way to stay employable is to have relevant skills.”
You also need to start connecting with the younger folks in the office, and in your field. “If you expect to be working at 65, everyone you work for is going to be younger than you,” says Challenger. “You better have relationships with them, and know how to communicate and relate to them. That doesn’t happen overnight.”
Know Your Market Rate
What you made in your last job doesn’t matter.
If you find yourself back in job-hunting mode in your 50s or 60s, you need to get your head around what your market value is out on the street. Quite often when you’ve been at one company for a long time, you can end up with an inflated salary due to company-specific expertise or knowledge. You just might find that 100 percent of that value is not transferable to your next job (see Hot Tip, below).
That’s not all bad news. Munnell says that surveys of post-50 job switchers show they often are content making less when it also means having a less stressful job. The trick is to have your finances in solid enough shape when you make the downshift to a less demanding job that it doesn’t throw off your retirement plan.
Hot Tip
Prep to Make Less
Post-50 job switchers tend to rake in less money, not more (see chart below). That makes it risky to assume you can delay stuffing your retirement accounts for later on; just when you expect to play catch-up, you could find yourself switching to a lower-paying job. It is also a screaming argument for not refinancing into a new 30-year mortgage or leveraging up with a home equity line of credit — assuming you have any equity — as you head into your 50s. Saddling yourself with those big-ticket expenses ratchets up the pressure to keep your earnings high.
