Your Money ;
After Steve Stanislowsky lost his job
two years ago, he moved from Wisconsin to Tennessee to find work and
a cheaper way of life. He took early
Social Security last year, at 62, and blew
through five jobs to supplement his
income. “I’ve seen a lot of people my age
going through the same situation, where
they lost their job and benefits,” he says.
“All of a sudden it stops dead in the
water and you have to rely on savings
and part-time jobs.” Not so for previous
generations, who stayed with the same
employers, acquiring tenure that largely
protected them from layoffs in midlife,
according to Alicia Munnell, director of
Steve
the Center for Re-
tirement Research
at Boston College.
Today’s older
workers are more
inclined to change
jobs for higher pay
or more flexibility.
“People put them-
selves in vulnerable positions by shifting
jobs in their 50s,” says Munnell. “Now
they face this horrible challenge of find-
ing a job, and once you’ve lost your job,
it’s almost impossible to get one back.
Plus, they’re drawing down assets … and
using the money just to stay alive.”
2010 Hoped to
live off Social
Security after
losing his job.
2009 Faced
foreclosure on
her home after
being laid off.
Living in her car was not what Barbara Harvey
had in mind for her mid-60s. But when the
financial meltdown turned her real estate busi-
ness upside down, Harvey’s
income vanished. She and
her two dogs, Phoebe and
Ranger, found themselves
in the back of her SUV
each night in a women-
only parking lot designated
for the homeless in Santa
Barbara, Calif. She took
Barbara
showers at a local gym and ate in her car. Over
the last two years, Harvey has moved in and out
of rented homes. In August, she settled in with
her daughter in a tiny apartment so small that
the dogs need to stay in her car at night. “I make
sure I take them to the park to run around off-
leash,” she says. Slowly, she’s rebuilding her client
base as a notary public and generating income.
Thanks to her modest Social Security benefit,
she’s also able to stash away some savings. “I am
hoping I can live on my own soon,” she says, “in a
home with a garden for me and the dogs.”
It took 57-year-old Veronica McGill
three years to find a job—and it was a
temporary one at that—paying about
two-thirds of her previous salary. McGill
exemplifies findings by the nonprofit
Urban Institute: that laid-off workers
ages 50 to 61 who find jobs earn on
average three-quarters of their previous
salary. (Workers 62-plus reported earn-
ing half.) For McGill, pictured at left with
her son, Askia, the
paralegal job she
snared in Septem-
ber didn’t come
soon enough.
After she lost her
previous one in the
financial services
industry in 2008,
she used up her
savings and stopped paying the monthly
$1,850 mortgage on her Maryland town-
house. She’s been facing foreclosure for
three years, and now the clock has run
out on her temporary job. She’s decided
to seek an MBA, using financial aid. “I’m
getting back on my feet,” McGill says.
“I’m not there yet.”
2008 Lost her
real estate business and lived in
her SUV.
