on Sep 28th, 2006Senior Entrepeneurs Growing Like Weeds
Forget sitting around the pool and chatting with your friends about how the price of gas seems to be falling faster than the pounds around your waist. Today’s seniors are restless and need more to do than simply wake up and enjoy a cup of coffee. If you spent your life working a crappy job, then it’s time to engage your real self. You know, the one you left behind after you graduated from college; the one that realized it couldn’t support a family on an artist’s budget.
Brace yourself Generation Y, X and everything coming down the pike. Baby Boomers are bored and lingering in the marketplace.
More people 55 and older seem to be rejecting the traditional model of puttering around the garden or the golf course. Many, however, have not simply hoped for a great second act, but have carefully planned their transition from lifelong careers, like Robert Mueller, a St. Louis machinist who bought a farm and turned it into a flourishing vineyard, or Marilyn Grazioli, who left nursing administration and is now running a busy suburban Detroit knitting store.
The numbers of retired people rejecting the unfettered leisure that has been the American model since the 1940’s in favor of starting up a small business are not exact. Federal government data suggests there are now at least three million entrepreneurs who are 55 and over — up one-third from the number counted in 2000.
In Life’s Second Act, Some Take on a New Role: Entrepreneur
By ELIZABETH OLSON
New York Times, September 28, 2006
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