According to AARP, nearly 55% of all people over 55 plan to have a part-time job when they retire. If you would like a little more freedom, your pre-retirement experience could be exactly what you need to help you land the perfect part-time job to supplement your retirement income. Here are eight ideas to inspire you.
1. Accounting and Bookkeeping
Many small businesses do not need a full-time bookkeeper and will be happy to have a seasoned professional on board. You can take on bookkeeping tasks for several small companies in your local area, or you can offer your services online through sites like Fiverr and Upwork. You can easily turn your pre-retirement bookkeeping and accounting experience into a lucrative post-retirement income.
2. Dental Hygienist or Physician Assistant
If you have professional experience working as a full-time dental or physician’s assistant, many smaller offices will be happy to have your help. With this opportunity, there is also the potential for signing up with a temporary agency where you can fill in for people on leave or vacation. You must maintain your license, but if you have experience in this field, it is one of the highest-paying part-time opportunities available.
3. School Bus Driver
Those who have experience working with children and maintaining order might like being a school bus driver. Your pre-retirement experience in daycare or as a teacher can be helpful in this position. You must maintain a commercial driver’s license and maintain a clean driving record, but many people who love working with children find this to be a rewarding part-time job in retirement. For teachers who miss working with the children every day, this can be a great way to keep a part of it in your life.
4. Administrative Assistant
Your experience in a large corporation as an administrative assistant is the perfect launching point for a part-time position in a smaller company, or you could become a virtual assistant and work from home. As a virtual assistant, you can offer your services through any number of online platforms.
People who need part-time tasks will search these sites to find someone to do things like book appointments, write business letters, do collections, perform research, and other online tasks. You can work from home and set your own hours while still making as much as you did working full-time.
According to AARP, demand for administrative assistants is falling as they are being replaced by virtual assistants instead. This is perfect timing to get into this opportunity.
5. Sales and Marketing
Those who have experience in sales, marketing, and advertising have a world of opportunity waiting for them on the Internet. You can put your knowledge of target markets, sales techniques, and closing sales to good use by running your own online business. The best part is that you do not have to have the ability to store products and ship them yourself. You can sell products for other companies that will ship them to customers, and you get to share the profits. You can also start an affiliate marketing blog where you will earn a percentage of every item purchased through one of your affiliate links.
6. Paralegal or Legal Secretary
Your experience as a paralegal or legal secretary gives you the opportunity to offer your services on an outsourced basis. This is one area that is expected to grow by as much as 12% by 2028, according to AARP. Legal firms see advantages in outsourcing certain tasks, rather than hiring someone full-time. You could easily offer your services through a firm or start your own website and build a nice part-time portfolio of clients.
7. Customer Service Experience
The world has changed for customer service representatives. The days of going in and sitting in a crowded phone bank are disappearing. Now, with advances in software and communications, many of these jobs are done from home.
If you have customer service or previous sales experience, you can do the same job that you used to do from the comfort of your own home office. Big companies like Amazon, Google, and others hire part-time customer service representatives to work from home. If you have the right experience and are willing to make a small investment in equipment, this is the perfect solution for part-time retirement income.
8. Coding and Software
Software and coding is a field that continues to grow in leaps and bounds. Your technical experience in this field can help you land one of the highest-paying part-time jobs available. You can offer your services freelance or through a company. You can work any hour of the day or night, as long as you meet your deadlines. You can also work from anywhere an Internet connection is available. This is another field where the industry is moving towards outsourcing, and this means excellent opportunities for retirees.
Turning your pre-retirement job experience into a part-time job means rethinking what you did for all those years and taking advantage of the new mindset among businesses that is more towards outsourcing than direct-hiring full-time staff.
Getting a part-time job can do more for you than just supplement your income. It can give you something to do and make you feel like you are contributing. A part-time job can let you save for a vacation or spoil your grandkids a little more. The best part is that you do not have to spend all of your time working. You can have the best of both worlds. Now, you can have the money that you need and the time to have fun spending it.