Yes, if you save enough to join the capitalist class* at an age younger than typical retirement age, you will be less financially vulnerable to age discrimination. However, you would still need to find something to do for non-financial life fulfillment if faced with forced retirement in this case.
*Capitalist class meaning that you no longer need any labor income to retire on your income from capital that you own, comfortably paying for all of your (and your dependents’, if any) financial needs including medical care/insurance.
Unfortunately, I did not succeed in joining capitalist class and got laid off in November 2016 at 59 and ended up changing 2 jobs in 2017. You need to be a good match for your coworkers and the manager. When I am interviewing with a 35yo Asian manager I know it will not work out. When you see a lot of older people around then you have a chance. I do not reply to the calls about positions in cool startups because I know that I am not cool and to the positions in hedge funds because I will probably not pass their interviews and it may be too much excitement anyway. I now work from home in a group of old geezers like myself.
It took me 4 months to find the first position where they gave me a low-ball offer that I took. I later learned that my compensation was below the median in our group while I had 28 years of experience and my co-workers did not impress me one bit. This was an old style company that did not get rid of dead wood and you need to stay there forever to slowly grow your salary. So I quickly picked up a few hot technologies and immediately found a new job that pays more than my original job plus the WFH arrangement gives me hopes that I can handle it until 70. My new manager is very technical and my geezers know what they are doing so we all learn from each other.
The large progressive international company that laid me off in 2016 and moved my position to India sent me a 75 pages long paper printout with every IT employee (just title and age) to prove to me that they had many older workers and I should not file an age discrimination lawsuit. That was funny.
“However, you would still need to find something to do for non-financial life fulfillment if faced with forced retirement in this case.”
I think if you have even a tiny bit of imagination, that isn’t difficult to do. For example, there are plenty of non-profit and political groups that would value your time and energy. Plus, if you embrace the fact that learning can happen at any age, it’s easy to keep oneself busy with learning, growing, helping others.
@doschicos I too wonder if ageism has always been around, or if it’s more acute now. Maybe I’m wrong, but there can be such a huge gap in tech savvy between the generations that it seems it’s worse today than, say, in the 70s.
I recently filled out applications for per diem positions. All the online applications were very similar and ALL required I enter graduation date. Some required date my professional licenses were issued. I had two interviews for two positions and I noticed print outs of the application form at each interview. I was grateful my application made it past HR and that I had an opportunity to interview. My perdiem availability ( I took an early retirement) combined with experience resulted in positive offers. Fortunately I had been named a recent employee of the quarter at previous job, I believe this was a huge selling point. I am so grateful. I have no idea the outcome if I had applied for full time positions (I want free time for community activities). I have a friend who is rather high up in the school district, she gave me names of teachers who could use random volunteer help. The school offices stated they needed help but wanted commitment on the same day each week-that rejection was disappointing. I had proof of TB test, immunization and was expecting to pay for lifespan.
I tried very hard to “de-age” my resume – but even if you’re lucky enough to be called for an interview, they’ll immediately see your age. I was contacted for a position with a global design company, passed the resume test, and even had an initial and very enthusiastic interview by phone. I was then invited for the next step, touring the company, and meeting with the department. It was almost funny if not so sad. Immediately when I arrived, it was obvious I was not what they expected. The entire staff was quite young. The interview became very rushed, the ‘tour’ even shorter. I believe they simply went through the motions, so they could quickly move on to another candidate. An interesting experience.
@techmom99 I’m curious why you have to leave on the year you passed the bar? Is there some way to put in that you’ve passed the bar and are an active member without that?
I currently work for a couple of male managers from India who are younger than I am (one is probably 25, the other in his early 40s). I never assume it “won’t work out” based on those types of differences. Gosh, if I would only work for managers my age or older, the pickings would be slim indeed. When I interview, I listen carefully for what problem they are looking to solve with this hire or contract, and try to pitch my experience accordingly.
I had an interesting experience a couple of years ago when I was interviewing through a consulting company with one of their clients. The consulting company representative (a youngster) listened in on my first interview. I got through that and was scheduled for my second. The consulting guy felt he needed to advise me that I should give more detailed technical examples in my answers for the next interview (I don’t think this was feedback from the client, just how HE would have done it). Well – I knew that the next and final interview was with a director level, and the last thing I should do was dwell on that level of detail. Sure, show a hint of it so you sound knowledgeable, but people at that level are often looking more for candidates to bring a broader perspective to the job. And I easily got the job after handling the second interview my way.
If my boss says to themselves, “I can send Intparent to this meeting because I KNOW she will likely handle it the same way I would and then I don’t have to go”, they are thrilled. If they know I’d make sure that the project I’m on will prudently cover making sure an auditor would be happy with the results, that we’ve done adequate testing so we don’t mess up production system, and that I can be left alone in a room with the director’s peers or even boss and will represent their area well, I’m going to get the contract pretty much every time.
Interesting thread. In this country, we don’t even perceive what we miss by not having an effective public/single-payer healthcare system. Being tethered to an employer for your health insurance, being afraid to start your own business or be a consultant, or retire early—what an enormous burden and cost we are paying. On the employer’s side, as people have pointed out, employers can be hesitant to take on older workers due to costs. It’s a huge issue, especially for older/experienced workers.
On another note, we should accept that our most productive years might not be our FINAL years of work. Think of an agrarian community–the most productive workers are in their 20s and 30s. If you are in your 50s or 60s, then you can still work–but maybe you tend the goats and garden, or make baskets, instead of doing the plowing, or planting the fields. I think older workers, in many cases, might very well be less productive–but could still serve a useful role. We just have no effective mechanism to implement this (and it would have to be done fairly). Thus we have all of the subtle and not-so-subtle examples of age discrimination, the layoffs that de-facto target older workers, etc. because we somehow assume that our salaries and responsibilities should increase monotonically until the day we retire.
There a few women around my age. Once when chatting about being “old” We all admitted we were primarily working for healthcare. Sad situation and sadly true. Since I am old but still need family insurance because I still have one in college and a retired H insurance was $1700 a month and that is just crazy.
Some of us perceive it. My husband is 65 and will retire early next year. He will go on Medicare, and I will have to switch from his employer’s very good insurance to my own employer’s lousy, high-deductible insurance. For health insurance reasons, I have no choice but to stay in my current job until I can get Medicare myself. I would like to cut back to part-time work but it’s health insurance that’s holding me back. We might want to move to another part of the country after my husband retires, but we won’t do it because there’s no guarantee that I can get a job somewhere else at my age, and without a job, I wouldn’t have health insurance that I could count on.
I don’t trust the Trump administration to keep Obamacare going, COBRA is hideously expensive and has time limits, private insurance is disastrously expensive (if available) for those of us with preexisting conditions, and it can take surprisingly long to actually get Medicare after you’re eligible. The highest priority in my life is to never go without health insurance for even a day because an unexpected illness or injury could wipe us out financially, and that dictates basically my whole life now.
There is only one good thing in this. Seven months ago, I moved from one company to another (because the government contract I work on moved, and I followed it). The contract ends when I will be 65 and a half. I’ll have my Medicare and my freedom by then. If I don’t want to move on to yet another company if the contract moves again, I won’t have to.
It was a financial disaster for us too, Maine. We ended up switching to Kaiser. Even its expensive, bare-bones coverage saved us many thousands of dollars over the Obamacare expensive, bare-bones coverage…
My company’s healthcare premiums for a married 61 year old are around 20,000 a year (myself!) for a single 30 year old man a little over 4,000. Who do you think wins in tie?
I’ve never understood why businesses wants to be in the healthcare (insuring) business and doesn’t support universal healthcare?
I don’t want to go down the health insurance rabbit hole. But your Kaiser plan is also an Affordable Care Act plan – just because it is not sold on the exchanges, the health insurance still has to provide the same basic services and consumer protections that plans sold on the exchanges do. Anyway… we probably should start a different thread if we want to debate the impact of the ACA on small businesses.
@intparent very true. I’m a supporter of Obamacare, but it my state the options were very limited, and ended up being shockingly expensive for anyone who made over a certain amount. And that amount wasn’t much!
@intparent : Regarding your response (#48) to @techmom99, the year of admission to the bar is a matter of public record in every state I know of. When I hire, due diligence includes verifying that the person really is an attorney and seeing if there are any non-disclosed incidents of discipline. Taking the year off the resume is not going to do much, unless the potential employer would read a resume it might otherwise toss in the recycling, but who would want to work there anyway?
Yes, I knew that. So someone could search. But if you can spark that initial interest without giving your age away, that is a tiny wedge that you didn’t have before.
I honestly think that for some people it is subconscious – they can’t tell you WHY they tossed the resume, just that it didn’t feel right to them. I’d still take it off. Let them ask you or check. Gives you a bit longer to make a positive impression. Also, your resume might get passed on to another person for review at the firm where it wouldn’t have been if the first person tossed it – another chance to make an impression. Plus, the person screening resumes might not even be the person the job ultimately reports to – so stay in the process as long as you can.
If I was applying for jobs where a law degree is a nice thing to have but you are not going to be practicing law, I could probably get away with it, but for jobs, like mine, where you go to court, you have to prove that you are admitted and licensed to practice. For my first job, I had to actually bring my admission certificate in for HR to photocopy. Since then, my state (NY) has begun maintaining a website of licensed attorneys so employers can check. The info includes the law school you attended and the exact date of your admission to the Bar. Given this fact, I wouldn’t even bother trying to fudge the dates on my resume.
