Older and Self-Employed – a Satisfied Group

The transition to Retirement can take many paths. A couple years ago, Joelle Abramowitz at the University of Michigan described three groups of self-employed workers over 50. The bulk of them work independently, either as independent contractors or doing odd jobs, and are more often minorities, with very low pay and few employee benefits. Think Uber driver. The other two groups are business managers and business owners, who are predominantly white, male and in good financial shape. In a follow-up to her earlier research, Abramowitz dug into 24 years of data to understand the self-employed older workers’ attitudes toward work and the transition to Retirement. She found a heterogeneous group with a range of views about whether they are transitioning at all. The independent contractors and workers stand out for being more likely to describe themselves as “partially retired.” Although they are self-employed, they apparently have their eyes on retiring.…

Originally Published on https://squaredawayblog.bc.edu/

Kim Blanton Squared Away Blog Writer

I’m a veteran financial and economics reporter, most recently for The Boston Globe, who has also written for The Economist and other publications. I uncovered scandals during the savings and loan crisis in Texas back in the late 1980s, trekked around the world to cover finance and economics in the 1990s, and ventured into Boston neighborhoods to cover the recent subprime mortgage crisis.

While covering subprime mortgages, I began to see the importance of financial behavior and literacy. Wall Street excesses certainly fueled the crisis, but a poor understanding of complex financial products also played a major role. I interviewed dozens of homeowners in the grip of foreclosure who had agreed to home loans that they did not understand and that their brokers did not or could not explain to them. The consequences for these individuals – and the country – were disastrous.

I use the same dogged reporting skills to cover financial issues of growing importance today, including the personal crisis that concerns millions of baby boomers: Retirement.