The New Boomerang Workers: Rehired Retirees...

How to go back to work in retirement where you had a full-time job   You’ve no doubt heard about boomerang kids who return to their parents’ homes in their 20s (maybe you have one). But there’s a growing group of boomerangers who are typically in their 60s: retirees who return to work part-time or on a contract basis at the same employers where they formerly had full-time jobs. If you’ll be looking for work during retirement, you might want to consider avoiding a job search and becoming one. Employers That Rehire Their Retirees A handful of employers have formal programs to rehire their retirees. The one at Aerospace Corp., which provides technical analysis and assessments for national security and commercial space programs, is called Retiree Casual. The company’s roughly 3,700 employees are mostly engineers, scientists and technicians, and Aerospace is glad to bring back some who’ve retired. “With all the knowledge these people have, we get to call on them for their expertise,” says Charlotte Lazar-Morrison, general manager of human resources at Aerospace, which is based in El Segundo, Calif. “The casuals are part of our culture.” The roughly 300 Aerospace casuals (love that term, don’t you?) can work up to 1,000 hours a year and don’t accrue any more benefits (the company’s retirees already get health insurance). Most earn the salary they did before, pro-rated to their part-time status, of course. Why Aerospace Corp. Brings Back ‘Casuals’ The “casuals” program lets Aerospace management have a kind of just-in-time staffing system. “It allows us to us to keep people at the ready when we need them,” says Lazar-Morrison. Ronald Thompson joined Aerospace’s casuals in 2002, after retiring at age 64. He’d worked for the company full-time since 1964,...

The 3 Questions to Help You Find Your Purpose...

Answer them and you’ll love your life more, says ‘The Payoff Principle’ author In junior high school, I decided that I would go into the ministry. The problem was, I wasn’t sure it was my dream . . . or ever had been. I went on to get my master’s and doctoral degrees, taught several undergraduate classes and something strange happened. I discovered I loved teaching and I was good at it — very good. But I also felt guilty for tossing aside my “supposed” purpose or calling to the ministry. Fortunately, I attended a workshop on “intensive journaling” about how to relax, think, reflect, visualize and keep a journal, so the deeper things inside me might be revealed. I then wrote in my journal: “I can serve God and others as a teacher, speaker and author.” Almost instantly, my guilt disappeared, and a sense of peace, direction, and well-being settled over me. I knew I was living my life and working my career on purpose. For years, I had confused a job with a purpose. Now, decades later, I am loving the work I do and feeling thankful that I’ve been able to touch the lives of thousands of people because my life and work have lined up with my purpose [https://designingbrightertomorrows.org/growth/5-tips-to-find-meaning-and-purpose-in-later-life/]. The payoffs start to roll in when you know that your life and your work are lined up with your purpose — at least some of the time. So that raises a critical question: How can you discover your purpose? It all comes down to the three critical, but deceptively simple, questions: What are you good at? What excites you? What difference do you want to make? Here’s how to answer them to find your purpose:...