I’m a Baby Boomer Who Had To Un-Retire: 3 Money Lessons I Wish I’d Known
Written by
Vance Cariaga
Edited by
Daria Uhlig
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The youngest baby boomers turn 61 years old in 2025, meaning they are only a year or so away from qualifying for Social Security retirement benefits. Their oldest boomer compatriots, born in 1946, are closing in on 80 years old and many of them probably left work behind years ago. But there is a vast middle population of boomers who retired and then “un-retired” when they found that retirement wasn’t working out.
One of the boomer un-retirees, TV producer and author George Jerjian, recounted his experience in a 2022 column for CNBC’s “Make It.” In it, he explained that he was forced into early retirement in 2007, at age 52, because of a medical condition. But after making a recovery, Jerjian found himself “bored, restless and stuck. My enthusiasm and energy diminished. My mental health suffered.”
That’s when Jerjian decided to join the ranks of the unretired by going back to work.
Back in Business
George launched a “mindset coaching company” to help people achieve a fulfilling retirement. As part of that work, he surveyed more than 15,000 retirees over the age of 60 and asked them to describe their single biggest challenge in retirement.
“The biggest retirement challenge that no one talks about, in my experience, is finding purpose,” Jerjian wrote. “Sure, money is certainly a concern. ‘I have a fear of poverty and losing dignity,’ one person said. Another wrote: ‘Money goes out, nothing comes in.’ But surprisingly, financial worries weren’t among the top three in the list.”
Nan Ives, a long-time employee at Fidelity Investments, had a similar experience after taking an early retirement package at age 59 last decade. As she told Fortune, her goals were to travel, spend more weekends on Cape Cod and play golf “to her heart’s content.” But Ives, now 65, found that retirement was not all it was cracked up to be.
“I could not wait to retire …. But if you retire at 60, there’s people living to their nineties. That’s a third of your life. To do what?” Ives said. “You don’t have to work, you don’t have to deal with all the things that are challenging about working, but it’s a third of your life that you don’t have a road map for.”
Like Jerjian, Ives unretired and joined forces with former coworker Lisa Stornaielo to launch The Future of You, which helps other individuals and employers plan and manage the transition to retirement.
Lessons Learned
Another boomer who retired is journalist Bob Neidt. Although not officially “un-retired,” he still contributes columns to various media outlets. One of those columns, for AARP, outlined some of the lessons Neidt wish he had learned before retiring. Here are three having to do with money:
- Don’t borrow from your 401(k) because “even if you can afford to both contribute and pay back the loan, you might not be able to” because some plans don’t allow you to contribute until the loan is repaid.
- Pay down credit card debt before retirement because “one thing you don’t want to carry into retirement is a lot of debt.”
- Consider a health savings account because “as we age, health care becomes increasingly important and increasingly expensive. Having a well-funded HSA can be a powerful tool.”
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