Semi-Retirement Is Getting Famous

In the last few years I’ve seen more and more articles and blog posts about different kinds of semi-retirement at different ages and for different reasons.  Here are a few links.

• More than a third of US workers say they want to gradually cut back on their hours instead of retiring all at once.

• Many retirement-age baby boomers lost money in the financial crisis and work at home to make ends meet.

• Writing at the excellent financial blog Get Rich Slowly, Lisa Aberle talks about semi-retiring temporarily to spend time with newly adopted children. Interesting links and thoughtful comments.

This is just scratching the surface of a complicated topic.  Okay, not complicated like quantum mechanics, but complicated like an important life decision. 

I’ve always thought of semi-retirement as the choice of people in their mid sixties or older who want to retire but also want to stay professionally active. Other, newer, definitions include young people who want to work part time to allow for other serious commitments of time and energy-- raising kids, mountain climbing, acquiring more do-it-yourself skills, or whatever.

Anyway, those are people with choices.  Not everybody these days is so lucky. (See this).  For people who need full time work but can’t find it, there’s no way to pretty up their survival-oriented lifestyle by calling it semi-retirement. 

Why Self-Employment is Wonderful

Despite the not-wonderfulness of sporadic and unreliable pay, no employer-paid vacations, no employer-paid insurance, having to pay both halves of FICA, and other features of not being on somebody else's staff, if I'd stayed in cubicle-land I doubt I could ever have worked up to an office with a view like this one from my home office window last summer.

Looking out office window last June.

Granted, the crepe myrtle blooms for only a few weeks.  But even during the less colorful time of year I look out and see nature stuff --good for humans, according to a number of studies.  

January, same tree, same window.

The transition from self-employment to retirement doesn't have to be abrupt unless that's the way you want it.  It's entirely possible to change a busy schedule to a more leisurely one by backing off on marketing efforts and accepting fewer jobs.

Okay, to be honest I also need a bit more income, so I can't quit entirely.