The wife and I are getting older. We have been working for decades at this point. But we are too young to retire, and we had kids late. But one of us could totally switch over to a lower stress second career. Ideally something with benefits, maybe even a chance to get a pension. And since we still have kids, needs to be flexible. One of our kids has autism, so lots of random doctors appointment and stuff.
We both work with computers all day. What are some good options for a second career that doesn’t need to have long term growth potential. We have 8 years where ideally both of us are working so we can cover each other with benefits if something happens. After that, the kids are out of high school at least. So it isn’t like it would be a “short” term career/job. Just not a 30 year thing. And ideally, something that could at least partially be done at home.
Real-talk, pensions don’t exist anymore.
Best bet for getting benefits and flexibility is working for the government.
If you have a government job, pensions are still very much a thing. Something like 1/3 of jobs are in the public sector and the majority of them offer a pension, and they’re pretty rare but there are still some private sector jobs offering pensions as well, though I wouldn’t hold my breath trying to get one of those.
It takes a whole lot of people to keep the local, state, and federal governments running, pull up your county job listings sometimes, they’re probably hiring for a few different jobs at any given time, some require very specific skills, training, or education, others are going to be basic janitorial work, office clerks, etc. and everything in between that pretty much anyone could manage, and everything in between, and almost all of them will qualify for a pension plan.
Source- am 911 dispatcher, vested in my pension, still another 15-20ish years before I can collect on it
I just retired from a government job 2 years ago (US military). I received a pension, but only because I was grandfathered into the old pension plan. The military stopped giving out pensions in 2017. They switched to the BRS (Basic Retirement System), which is basically their version of a 401K.
When they switched, they gave all service members with less than 12 years of service the option to switch to the BRS or stick with the old pension program. Anyone who joined after the switch doesn’t get a choice. They’re automatically enrolled in the BRS.
I had 15 years of service at the time, so I didn’t qualify for BRS. It wouldn’t have benefited me anyway; there’s no way I could’ve saved up enough money to retire on in my 5 remaining years. I much prefer my monthly direct deposit for the rest of my life.
It’s the Blended Retirement System and it is a blend of a pension and an employer-sponsored retirement account. In the BRS service members went from 2.5% per year of service to 2% and gained a 5% match to their Thrift Savings Plan. So a member retiring at 20 years in the BRS would receive 40% of their base pay as pension vs 50% under the traditional military retirement system.
Yeah, that’s the one. Since I didn’t qualify for it, I didn’t pay much attention to it. They always just told us it’s kind of like a 401K, where you contribute up to a certain amount and the govt matches your contribution.
The only problem is that they do not pay commensurate to similar jobs in non-gov positions.
Oh, and also for many gov jobs you must conduct mandatory quarterly drug tests to ensure you are in compliance to federal drug laws.
Oh, and also you must submit fingerprint and/or DNA samples to gov databases in case you are/ become a criminal and they can use it against you.
Oh, and also you must disclose many financial, foreign family, or unusual hobbies, so they can legally deny you things such as certain rights in case you are in a job that requires security clearances or NDAs.
Oh, and also, it’s difficult to promote to higher pay positions unless you grease the right hands and network the right people or simply be lucky right-place-right-time, you will simply stagnate in your place for a long time (or just simply be furloughed).
Oh, and also, if the gov shuts down, you don’t get paid.
A lot of those are features of some government jobs, but not necessarily government jobs in general
No, but they do make up for it at least somewhat in benefits, which sounds like something OP is interested in, and since they’re looking for a less stressful job, they probably have also come to terms with the fact that the pay would likely be lower
That varies on the nature of the job and the agency you work for. Like I said, I work in 911 dispatch, so I’m subject to a lot of federal regulations and such, including about drug use, but the only time I got drug tested was when I was hired, the only circumstance I’m subject to testing is if they have reason to think I’m intoxicated on the job. (The test when I was hired was a hair test, fun fact, at least at the place that did our testing, their policy is if you shave your head like I do, the next place they take a sample from is your armpit, I was expecting them to take it from my beard, but they wanted pit hair)
I did get fingerprinted, that is true. No DNA samples though. Not exactly unique to government jobs though, a lot of private sector childcare and healthcare employees, casino workers, bank employees, and security companies, just to name a few, require fingerprinting.
Don’t recall that ever coming up in my hiring process, and I handle a lot of privileged info. Not exactly a security clearance or NDA, but lots of personal info and such that I can’t talk about outside of work.
The same can be said about a whole lot of private sector jobs as well. Networking is a big deal. This also depends on the exact agency/department you work for, a lot of agencies do like to promote internally to fill openings and new positions when possible. At my work it’s pretty rare to see someone totally new brought in to fill most of our positions we get people being promoted and moved around a fair bit when there’s an opening, and most of my chain of command up to the director of my department started out as dispatchers and worked their way up through various supervisory roles, deputy directors, etc. Some positions are of course more of a dead end than others, there’s only so many places you can move up to from courthouse clerk, but it can also be pretty easy to transfer to a different department, I’ve had a fair amount of coworkers move from the communications division (which dispatch is a part of) to logistics, IT, emergency planning, the coroners office, there have been cases where underperforming dispatchers have been found other jobs in the county, etc. And not everyone cares about promotion, I’m happy to keep answering 911 calls for the next 20 or so years, and I suspect that OP maybe doesn’t care too much about long term career prospects since it sounds like= they’re basically just looking for something to hold them over until retirement.
If a private company shuts down, you don’t get paid and you have to go looking for a new job because it’s probably not going to open back up in a few days or weeks after the assholes in charge get their heads out of their asses.
All of these problems are fairly unique to the US government. I work for the Canadian government and none of that was a problem for me.
Apart from IT jobs, public sector pay is competitive with private. Depending on how much you value the pension and benefits, you could even say the IT jobs are competitive.
People openly talk about their drug use around the water cooler. There’s literally no stigma at all unless someone starts talking about how much meth and crack they did last weekend. But like weed is super normal to hear about and I’ve even heard someone talk about using mushrooms before.
I had to do a simple police background check to get my job. No DNA.
I never had to tell them about my hobbies.
I didn’t have to grease any hands for a promotion. Promotions are unfortunately mostly based on seniority, but in the right place they can be based on merit too. But there are lots of diagonal advancement opportunities, jumping around within your dept or between depts is totally viable. There can be a bit of a glass ceiling if you aren’t bilingual, but there is free training offered to learn French to help with advancement. On top of that, our union contracts guarantee pay raises every year even in the same position.
Only the US government ever randomly shuts down because your country has this dumb feature where Congress can play chicken with the funds for public sector jobs. In most countries that’s not a thing.