Work after sixty: income, enterprise and vocation in the later years

The shapes work takes after sixty

Retirement is usually described as a switch. In practice it is more often a dial, and the settings are worth knowing before you reach for one.

• Phased retirement, where an employer formally reduces your hours over a period while you stay on the books. Some employers run structured programmes; many will agree to an informal version if asked, because the alternative is losing the knowledge outright.
• Consulting in the field you left. Two days a week at a real rate, priced on thirty years of judgement rather than on hours.
• Interim and fractional roles. Organisations need experienced hands temporarily and pay well for them.
• Teaching, training, examining, mentoring: the work Titus 2 describes, sometimes paid.
• Something small that you own. The arithmetic in what a business is does not change with age.

An earned dollar in these years does unusual work. Every year of income is a year the portfolio does not have to fund, and money left invested through an early bad market stretch is the most effective defence against the sequencing problem described in decumulation and sequence risk.

The Social Security earnings test, in outline

If you claim Social Security before full retirement age and keep working, some benefits are withheld. The mechanics matter more than the numbers, because the numbers change every year.

• The test applies only before full retirement age. From the month you reach FRA there is no limit at all, however much you earn.
• Only wages and net self-employment earnings count. Pensions, annuities, investment income, interest and most other government or military retirement benefits do not.
• If you are under FRA for the whole year, SSA withholds $1 for every $2 you earn above the annual exempt amount: $24,480 for 2026 (SSA).
• In the year you reach FRA, a higher limit applies to earnings in the months before your birthday month, and the ratio softens to $1 for every $3: $65,160 for 2026 (SSA).
• Both figures reset every year. The 2026 amounts are from SSA’s exempt-amounts table; later years’ numbers live there and on SSA’s earnings-test page.
• Withheld benefits are not forfeited. At FRA, SSA recomputes your benefit to credit the months that were withheld, which raises the ongoing payment for life.
• Separately, a strong late-career year can displace a low or zero year in the highest-35-year computation behind your benefit, permanently lifting it.

Read those together and the common belief that working “cancels” your benefit turns out to be roughly wrong in both directions: it is neither free nor lost. Whether to claim early, at FRA, or later is not a question this page will answer for you. See Social Security claiming for the mechanics, and note that earned income also interacts with tax brackets, Medicare premium surcharges and marketplace subsidies. That interaction is worth an hour with a professional holding your actual figures, before you start rather than after.

Age discrimination, named honestly

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act forbids discrimination against workers aged 40 and over, and covers private employers with 20 or more employees, state and local governments, employment agencies, unions and the federal government. It reaches hiring, firing, promotion, layoff, pay, benefits, assignments and training, and it also forbids age-based harassment and retaliation (EEOC).

That is the law. Enforcement is hardest exactly where the problem is worst: at the hiring stage, where a decision leaves no trace. Which argues for practical countermeasures rather than resignation: keep a résumé to roughly the last fifteen years, lead with current credentials rather than long tenure, reach roles through people who already know your work rather than through application portals, and sell the judgement, which is the scarce thing, instead of competing on stamina, which is not.

Starting something late

Starting a small enterprise at sixty-five is not a novelty. It can be a better bet than the same attempt at twenty-five, because the network, the reputation and the domain knowledge already exist. Three cautions carry more weight at this age. Keep fixed costs low enough that a slow first year is survivable. A common caution is not to fund it from the retirement accounts or by borrowing against the house, because on a fixed income there is no raise or promotion to repay a mistake with. And treat anyone who approaches you with an opportunity with real suspicion; this age group is targeted deliberately (see how scams work).

Vocation, not obsolescence

“The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness” (Proverbs 16:31, KJV): a crown, not a problem to manage. Psalm 92:14 expects fruit in old age. Numbers 8 shows the Levites moving off the heavy lifting at fifty and continuing to serve alongside the younger men. Titus 2 does not offer older believers a hobby; it gives them a role in forming the younger (older women teaching younger women, by name), work that only they can do because it requires having lived it.

And for the far end of it, when working is no longer the question: “even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you” (Isaiah 46:4, KJV). That sentence is addressed to exactly this season.