Reinventing may be hard work. That’s the conclusion of a new study on “encore careers” released yesterday by the Met Life Foundation and Civic Ventures, a San Francisco non-profit focused on the life experiences of boomers who are trying to help solve social problems..
Most people start thinking about having a “second act” career at age 50 and it usually takes about eighteen months to make the transition. But two out of three who make such a change usually find that they earn less than they did. In fact, one quarter said they earned no money and 43 percent said they earned significantly less than they had at their previous jobs.
"The financial hardship of the transition really jumped out at us as one of the big challenges," said Jim Emerson, executive vice president at Civic Ventures. "Most people currently in encore careers didn't have much in the way of resources to turn to; most depended on their spouses."
Other findings of the study were that four out of five of those who had no or little earnings experienced this financial shortfall for more than six months and a third said their incomes were curtailed for more than two years.
For those who want to transition into non-profit work, Civic Ventures is advocating for more short-term, part-time and paid fellowships which would lead to "encore careers."
