Tag Archives: Voluntary Unemployment

Not The Retirement Job! Staying Unemployed Once You’ve Left Work For Good

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All our working lives, we move towards retirement like it’s the holy grail. We may get stuck in the rat race for the best part of our lives, but one day, we stand to see our days doing what we want. Ahh, to not have to get up in the mornings. How blissful would that be?

Of course, it’s no secret that retirement days are forever getting further away for many people. Now, the majority of us have no choice but to keep working past retirement. Even those of us who do make it often face the prospect of a retirement job. There’s nothing wrong with this path if you take it because you want to. Many retired people choose to rejoin the world of work. An easy position in a quiet shop could, after all, be the ideal way to get out of the house for a little socializing and adding to one’s coffers. Others, myself included, used retirement as a means to explore new career ambitions. After all, retirement should be defined as the absence of needing to work, not the absence of working.

This only becomes an abomination and retirement failure if you’re forced into a retirement job you really don’t want to do because of money worries. You didn’t work all your life, just to go back into a job you hate in your seventies. Just because our savings and investments take a dump in a bad market, we experienced a loss of benefits, or took some other financial hit causing financial distress, we shouldn’t jump at any crappy job as the only answer. Which is why it’s worth considering these alternatives if it looks like a job is approaching your retirement horizon and you have absolutely no interest in re-joining the rat race.

Retirement Funding Is Short- Oh No, Not The Retirement Job!

Can you reduce your expenses?

First, ask yourself whether you can reduce your expenses. Many of us enter retirement thinking we can keep up the same standards. But, that’s not usually financially viable, especially over the long-term. After all, you’re now operating on finite finances. That car which costs a fortune no longer fits into that. Neither does overspending on all kinds of other things. This isn’t to say you should put yourself on the bread line. But, letting go of some luxuries could make your life more financially comfortable.

Consider things like reducing or dropping your expensive cable or satellite TV service and wireless phone plan. Those 2 items alone can represent hundreds of dollars a month. Shop your insurance plans for better rates. Insurance companies are always making rate changes but seldom tell their existing customers of money-saving options. There are many cost cutting opportunities to explore to lower your lifestyle costs. Thus, you could do away with the need for a retirement job altogether. Even where we live should not be off the table. Downsizing and relocating should be looked at. Reducing your retirement lifestyle costs is the first place to look when money becomes tight and you don’t want to return to the grind.

Is there an easier way to make money?

If you hate the idea of going back to a working environment, why not consider new ways to make money? There are passive income options which stand to earn more than a part-time job could. Investing some of your retirement fund in a rental property could stand to earn you a lot each month if done right. If you are a homeowner, you could rent your home out either fully or partially. Consider moving to a lower cost location and rent out your home or take advantage of your space by taking on a roommate or using a short-term lodging service like Airbnb to bring in extra cash.

 

Equally, many retired individuals turn to investment to make some extra money. When our portfolios can’t deliver gains, interest, and dividends fast enough, there are other ways to make money in the market. If you’re unfamiliar with trading, but enjoy a good wager now and then, you could look at something like spread betting. This is a form of trading using principles stolen from the sports betting world. To make it work for you, all you would need to do is bring forward your betting knowledge and ask yourself, where can you spread bet?. Or, if you have the confidence to stick it out playing in the stocks and shares market, you could make your money that way.

Do your research, get educated, don’t overestimate your skills, and be smart!

This isn’t for everyone. It takes a certain skill set and having a risk-taking personality to pull it off. Anything that involves making a spread bet or day trading may have the potential for high reward but also comes with higher risks than you may be willing to take or should take. You are working with your life’s savings so don’t put all of your eggs into this basket.

Could you work for yourself?

We may think of entrepreneurs as young go-getters, but individuals over 50 are actually dominating the startup market. You could always opt to do the same. After all, a home based and/or internet based business can be started with minimal upfront cash. What’s more, a successful startup could keep earning for you, even if you decide to take a back seat down the line. If a startup isn’t in your cards, you can consider jumping into the gig economy. As a freelancer you choose when and where you work. While working for yourself does have the downside of still being work, at least you won’t have to answer to a boss anymore.

 

If after considering all the alternatives you still find your answer is returning to paid work to fix your retirement funding shortfall, then choose your retirement job the right way. Figure out what your payable skills are and find something you have interest in doing. Not everyone considers working in retirement as being a good retirement. But having a job doing something you want to do or enjoy doing isn’t a bad retirement either. With some cost cutting and earning a little extra each month you may find that you can return to your retired unemployed bliss sooner rather than later.

Voluntarily Unemployed or Early Retiree

Retire Early, Retire Often,

What am I? Voluntarily Unemployed or Early Retiree. A recently read newspaper article talked about how the employment percentage numbers are not as high as being reported. This was due to many people opting for Voluntary Unemployment.

Unemployment or unemployed to me has always been a kind of negative financial status to be in. You need a job and are looking for one with urgency. My first thought was who are these Voluntarily Unemployed people choosing to be in this financially negative status and in doing so screwing up the national and state measured unemployment numbers? I mean, who are these people who need a job and money to survive but voluntarily chooses unemployment? All of which results in eventual starvation and homelessness.

As usual when I come across a new term I am not familiar with my Leisure Freak curiosity latches onto it. For me it starts with a web search to find out how people define and use the terminology.

How is Voluntary Unemployed Defined?

Oh boy. Based on the first definition of Voluntary Unemployment found in my search I was mostly wrong about how it is defined and what it is:

“Voluntary unemployment is a situation when a person is unemployed because of not being able to find employment of his/her own choice.”

Hold on a minute, are they talking about me?

Well that definition isn’t too bad but it is certainly extremely broad. I admit that this definition describes me perfectly as an early retiree. Someone doing the “retire early and often” thing. Like other early retirees I know we are always open to opportunities of interest and passions. That is as long as the opportunity aligns with what we value. Not so much of not being able to “find employment of our choice”. But taking time off when we want to and being super picky about the work we trade our time for. Hardly the negative financial status I have always associated with being unemployed.

Voluntary Unemployment as defined – a bad generalization

Voluntary Unemployment as defined is a bad generalization. By using a word as in “unemployed” that usually means being in a bad financial situation and needing to work. There are a lot of generalizations thrown around these days. Even though we all know generalizations are usually false. Mostly devised by some select specific group or special interest group upset that things aren’t going their way. Generalization is the tool used to persuade the masses to their cause. Those with the money and media’s ear know that many people lazily fall for their targeted generalizations.

That Voluntary Unemployment definition describes my first impression. Someone who is unemployed and unable to support themselves yet chooses to not look for a job. It also includes everyone in between. Like freelancers, threshold earners, stay at home parents, etc. Basically Voluntary Unemployment includes anyone who is able-bodied who chooses to not be employed whether they can support themselves or not. Talk about a broad-stroke label and generalization of people who are choosy when choosing to work.

Voluntarily Unemployed or Early Retiree, it’s all the same to the Generalizers.

Look, some of us have earned the right to be picky about the work we agree to do. And there I believe is the issue that THOSE who coined the term “Voluntary Unemployment” and so broadly defined it are most likely at odds with. Some other observations found in my reading about Unemployment paints pictures with warnings and dread. All to further discourage voluntarily unemployment:

Unfulfilled Economic Obligation–

Unemployed resources (meaning people) are idle and an economic waste. For those who have received education and training and do not work the costs associated to their learning and skills is wasted.

Loss of Government TAX Revenue–

The unemployed pay no or much lower income taxes. They pay less indirect taxes like sales taxes because they ultimately spend less.

Decreased Human Capital–

Many skills are gained while working on a job. Being unemployed can mean that fewer new skills will be acquired and their existing skills will be lost.

Gap in Work History-

The longer people are unemployed the harder it is to rejoin the world of the employed. Business believes the longer you are unemployed the more skills you lose. Some even believe the long unemployed lose the habit of working.  Over time some workers may become permanently excluded from employment with little or no prospects of work.

Stagnant salaries for the employed –

There is political pressure to paint a rosy economic picture and unemployment is one of those measurements. Corporations, businesses, and their stooge politicians believe that the unemployment numbers are not as low as reported. All due to the Voluntarily Unemployed and don’t feel the need to raise wages. Of which they normally would with today’s positive unemployment figures. Raising wages may bring more to the table thus negatively impacting unemployment numbers and returning to an employer’s market so why bother raising salaries.

The generalization label of Voluntary Unemployment is starting to look like some great big guilt trip. By the way I am chuckling inside because it’s not working.

For those of us who have worked hard and embraced frugal living. Who became super-savers and avoided debt to reach a point of early retirement. To choose to retire early and often by only working on our terms. I say there is nothing to feel guilty about even if all the above is true. But it’s not true.

My detailed rebuttal:

Unfulfilled Economic Obligation–

Not hardly. If I decide I don’t want to do that work anymore then I owe nobody my labor or an explanation. I was educated, trained, and I worked my keister off which repaid any associated costs ten times over. By the way, who are you calling idle? I am busy doing what I want to all day long and using the skills I WANT to use.

Loss of Government TAX Revenue–

I am sure this one stings because I use to pay more in yearly Income Taxes than my entire yearly early retirement lifestyle budget. It shouldn’t be an issue because you would think the corporation would back-fill. Then someone else would pay the taxes. But that is only if they hire someone or should I say hire someone in this country. Of which in my case they did not. Don’t blame the early retiree or voluntary unemployed for this one. As for spending less thus reducing indirect taxes. Early retirees (myself included) spend just about as much as we did when employed minus commuting cost. Early retirees get there by being a frugal living super-saver. So the voluntary unemployment generalizers are wrong here. The Government never received an unbridled consumerist level of indirect taxes from us.

Decreased Human Capital–

This could happen if your skills required constant practice. But many skills only lose value if they become obsolete. Most new software applications in business are made so that working with them is easier. So if someone had done it the hard way before they should easily pick up the new crap. At least just as easy as if they were chained to the desk when it was deployed. So what if people get a little rusty. Rusty is better than having no skills at all.

Gap in Work History Punishment –

Yep, the punishment by the corporate world and adopted by every HR and hiring manager because the employment authorities made this a thing. Out of work too long then you can’t work again. Or should I say they won’t let you work again. Same old warning I have heard since retiring early the first time. Seems more like an institutional punishment for free thinkers and free workers. Punishment to those who defy the call for every able-bodied person to be shackled by an employer. Staying shackled under any condition until they say it is OK for you to leave. If someone forgets how to work and becomes a lazy employee later then fire them. Why punish everyone?

Stagnant salaries for the employed-

Just another excuse for the “Man” to show who is in charge. They are right. You make a job attractive enough with increased salary and flexibility and people who are sitting on the side-lines would maybe come give it a looky-loo. So what? Don’t blame the Voluntary Unemployed for a business strategy to horde cash and increase pay for executives instead of raising salaries for all employees.

In Closing

So how do I see myself, Voluntarily Unemployed or Early Retiree? I see myself as an early retiree. As for Voluntarily Unemployed it’s too broadly defined to be a thing. Or represent a group to have any real meaning. Voluntarily Unemployed does describe every retiree who leaves their career or work on their own terms. Including every stay at home parent who has made that choice for their children. It even includes the people who can’t support themselves but won’t look for a job. The list goes on.

A better definition if they really need to have a label for people who are Voluntarily Unemployed that are making employment measurements difficult is – “Voluntary unemployment is a situation when a person who needs employment to support themselves is unemployed because of not being able to find employment of his/her own choice.”

See, by adding that little statement it narrows the definition to those who need employment and they should be counted in unemployment reports. Go ahead, label me and other early retirees with a broad and meaningless generalization. It won’t bother me as I stay free from meaningless work living life on my terms. I do apologize for ruining the corporate and political master’s Unemployment Measurements. But I never consider myself unemployed. Voluntarily or otherwise.

Are you striving to join the Voluntary Unemployed through financial independence?

Will you be able to live with yourself knowing you are screwing up the employment measurements?