It’s never too late to start a business
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While many people look forward to retirement after a lifetime of work, for some people its approach fills them with dread. Being forced to end your working life at sixty-five, whether you want to or not is viewed with dread by many people. After a lifetime of activity, To suddenly wake up one day with nothing to do can send many into a spiral of depression. Especially if you only have a small company pension to top up your tiny state pension.
Today the opportunity for people who have retired to start their own part-time or full-time business is much easier now thanks to the internet. And, according to Frances Kay, the editor of
“The Good Non retirement Guide” a growing number of older people are refusing to sit down and vegetate. Many are taking the plunge and starting their own businesses. According to Frances, ” if you look at the proportion of the population who are starting a small business, there are a lot of older people about. They are doing it because at a certain stage in life they want autonomy and they don’t necessarily want to be working in an organization for someone who is half their age. People are living longer and are healthier so you probably have 25 years between 55 and 80 when you can get a heck of a lot done. There is a lot you can achieve and it can be hugely satisfying.”
As Frances mentions people are living much longer than they were when the official retirement age was set at sixty-five. Many people today are much healthier and stronger in middle age than their parents were and been consigned to the scrap heap when you feel you still have much to contribute can be like a prison sentence.
It is still a disaster to made redundant in your fifties. Despite the governments attempts to encourage employers to employ older people. Let’s face it, when faced with a candidate of 55 and 23 most people will employ the younger person. The person doing the employing will probably be in their twenties and may feel uncomfortable giving orders to someone old enough to be their father or mother.
If you are fit and healthy then age is no barrier to starting your own business. In fact you have many advantages. You will have, over the course of your life, picked up many valuable social skills which every successful business needs. You will have a maturity that will give you a greater tolerance level to the daily problems faced by small enterprises. And the thought of avoiding the daily trek to work where you are taking orders from someone young enough to be your son or daughter can be appealing.
After a lifetime spent working for others it’s not too late for middle-aged people to branch out on their own start their own business. We know that working for others will never provide us with enough money to enjoy a comfortable retirement. And with the banks going down and our pension investments collapsing many older people are finding themselves heading towards retirement without the financial cushion they hoped for. This is a good time to think about starting your own business.
Reasons for starting a business
If you were born in the fifties or early sixties, if you went to school in the sixties and seventies then you belong to a forgotten people. We were brought up to believe that loyalty to a company was a virtue that would be rewarded. We paid our taxes willingly believing that the government would take care of us in our old age. We trusted the government. Today we know we have been fooled. The government uses us as tax cows to finance one social experiment after another. The companies we gave our lives to cast us aside with no respect for what we have done for them. We are in effect on our own. The values we were brought up to believe in are our main handicap to success.
The government relies on us for taxes, they tax our wages, our pensions and our savings, yet they give us nothing back and listen to nothing we say, our views are ignored and the only people who can look forward to a comfortable retirement are taxpayer funded MPs, civil servants and the super rich. For the rest of us it’s a retirement of struggling to make ends meet, our small company pensions will be held against us when it comes to trying to claim any support, the autumn of our lives will be spent in rising poverty while the people who put us there live in luxury.
There is however a new phenomenon occurring. The rise of the middleaged entrepreneur. People who have spent their lives working for companies that have then cast them off, are refusing to lay down and die. Refusing to hold their heads in their hands and whinge. No a growing number of middleaged people are starting their own businesses to secure for themselves a comfortable retirement. I’m glad to say that I’m one of that growing band.
At fifty I’ve decided to take positive action to prevent myself from walking into a retirement of poverty. We can’t trust the government. We have to look after ourselves. So welcome to my blog. This is a blog that will follow me as I set up a new business and work with total commitment to make it work. I refuse to fail. I have fifty years of experience on this planet and I intend to use that experience to ensure the success of mu business.
My business is an arts and crafts supply business. I have chosen this because I have an interest in art being a novice painter and enjoy reading about and using art products. My fifty years on the planet has furnished me with many social skills which I will use to offer a total quality customer service. Every customer will be welcomed as a friend and provided with the best possible service.
I started my business on the first of January2008. I will sell on EBay and via my own website. The objective is to make enough money to retire at sixty something that can’t possibly be done working for someone else. I’m not a member of parliament so I don’t have the luxury of claiming expenses to the tune of £100,000 per year. I will, as I have always done, earn every penny I make. I’ll post progress reports at least once a week possibly twice a week. I Hope to build a community of like minded people, a community of 50 pluses in business where we can come to offer advice and support to each other. So let’s go.
