Five of the best second careers for older adults and retired seniors

Many people might say that happiness comes from the balance of work and fun. For older adults, however, it may not be feasible or desirable to work late into your twilight years. If you’re financially ready to retire or already retired, you may be thinking about ways to achieve this balance again. Luckily, there are jobs that don’t require full-time, are easy to pick up, and can make some extra money for you while leaving plenty of room in your schedule. Here are five of the best.

Tutoring 

As an experienced adult, you probably have plenty of knowledge and wisdom to share. Even if what you’ve been doing for the past few years didn’t have anything to do with teaching directly, you definitely know enough to tutor English, basic math, and some history. If you have a special skill, such as playing piano or knitting, you can also offer to teach those.

If you like working with and helping people, tutoring may be the perfect option for you. Going the academic route, you can ask nearby high schools if they have or know of tutoring programs that could help, or go online and search for tutoring organizations that are hiring. Some popular ones include Tutors.com, Skooli, and Studypool. There are sure to be others in your area.

You may have to go through their application process, but these are usually straightforward. And once you’re accepted, most tutors set their own hours, and some online organizations allow you to accept or decline helping a student within those hours. If you don’t want to go through an organization but still want to tutor, you could also put up flyers in schools or talk to neighbors to let people know you’re open for private tutoring. 

Freelance Writing

Freelance writing is a good option for older adults because it goes on a job-by-job basis, which means you can take the jobs you want and decline the jobs you don’t. Plus, you often get to do it from the comfort of your own home.

Freelance writing can include writing articles for a blog (like this one), grant writing, creating text for brochures, or meeting other writing needs for organizations. The type of work you’d be doing would vary depending on what kind of writing or job you’d been willing to take.

One downside of freelance writing is that you would be the one looking for opportunities constantly, and would have to keep track of who you’re in contact with, how far along you are in their hiring process, and what they need you to write. This can be exhausting for some people, but exciting for others. To get started finding freelance writing jobs, you can create accounts on sites such as Freelancer, Upwork, and FlexJobs. 

Rideshare Driver 

If you’re someone who wants to get out and about instead of sitting at home, and enjoys driving yourself, becoming a rideshare driver could be a good option for you. Rideshare drivers are the workers for services like Uber, Lyft, and more, who use their own cars to pick up people and drive them to a requested location.

Again, the reason this is great for older adults is that as a rideshare driver you can set your own hours and only take jobs you want. You simply get in your car, open the app you decide to use, and then someone will request a driver. Depending on where the person is and where they want to go, you can decide whether or not to take the job.

If you don’t like the idea of driving people, but the idea of driving as work still interests you, there are other similar options. For example, you could join services like DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, InstaCart etc. that focus on transporting food, instead of people. For all these apps, you typically have to apply to become a driver for them, but the process is relatively easy. 

Babysitter 

Depending on what route your life took, you may have had plenty of experience with kids already. If you miss have (or have never had, but want) alone time with young children, babysitting can give you a purpose doing something you really enjoy.

There are plenty of ways to enter the babysitter market. You could ask around, and offer your services to neighboring parents who might want a night off. You could apply to an agency who will send you to families who might be a good fit. You could also download an app, such as Care.com, where you can create a profile, and from there you can find job postings and message parents who need a babysitter for occasional weekends.

This option doesn’t have the benefit of setting your own hours as much, since it will largely depend on the time parents need caretakers. At the same time though, it will provide more flexibility than a typical full-time job would.  

Your Own Business 

Another possibility for older adults with time on their hands is to start a small business. We’re not talking about buying a storefront, manufacturing a new item, or starting a restaurant (although these are possible options, they just aren’t the easy ones), but more on the scale of selling small goods or services online or to your community.

For example, if you really enjoy knitting or some other craft, you could start selling what you make on ebay or etsy, platforms where people can sell their stuff. You could even learn a new skill, such as making jewelry, art, or soaps. These may take more time than the others, and you won’t see as much profit from it, but at the end of the day you could be spending time doing something you enjoy and making a little money on the side from it. 

Retirement is a big step in life, and while it can be relaxing to have time to yourself, it can also be boring and occasionally isolating if you live alone. With the jobs listed in this article, hopefully you can find a better balance between taking time to yourself while still feeling fulfilled. If you’re looking for other ideas on how to enrich your retirement life, you can check out these articles on volunteer opportunities and hobbies for older adults. 

— Avery Tamura