Why losing your job in your 50s could be the BEST thing for you
When Inspire highlighted the plight of women made redundant in later life you responded in droves . . . with surprisingly upbeat stories
HERE, five inspirational women show how facing redundancy in your 50s can actually bring a whole new lease of life . . . I’d forgotten that freedom existed CAROL HINES, 60, lives in Thetford, Norfolk. She is divorced and has two children, a daughter aged 36 and a son, 37.
THERE was no ceremony to my redundancy. One day I was the practice manager of a law firm on a very good salary and the next, at 5pm, I was given a formal redundancy letter. That was it. I’d been there 24 years and I was 58.
All the extra hours I’d put in, the loyalty I showed, the work I took home — none of it mattered.
In fact, life had revolved around work to such an extent that I’d got divorced. I’d bought my ex out of the family home in the belief I’d be able to afford the mortgage alone. Now, I couldn’t. Made redundant in September 2013, by the following April, I had to sell up.
I tried not to blame myself, but at my lowest moments it was hard to muster optimism for the future. I walked my dog and exercised near-obsessively, so I was exhausted enough to sleep at night.
Visits from the children forced me to maintain standards. My children were 34 and 35, but mothers never want to cause worry by falling apart, so I pretended to be the independent, self- confident woman they’d always known.
But my sense of self had taken a vicious blow. Rebuilding that confidence wasn’t easy: every time I rang a recruitment agent or interviewer, I could hear their voice change as soon as I told them my age. It was as though no woman over 45 could expect to reboot her career.
So instead I took stock. Did I really want to be at someone’s beck and call again? Perhaps, all along, sitting in that office for almost a quarter of a century, life had simply been passing me by. Today, I enjoy a freedom I’d forgotten existed. I retrained as a freelance business/life coach and consultant, and work with entrepreneurs and young businesspeople, often on plans for exciting new start-ups.
I had to hit rock bottom before I could start to climb out of the hole — but as I sit in the dunes near my downsized house in Norfolk, reading a book in the sun, I know that in the end I won. Not them.
It was a big wake-up call PENNY DORAN, 62, is single and lives in Camberley, Surrey.
My FIRST thought was: I’ll never work again. I was 54 and I’d just been made redundant from a job I’d held for 19 years.
Was I really finished at this age? Back then, I couldn’t know it was the best thing to happen to me. Instead, my future felt terrifyingly bleak. It was 1997 and there’d been several rounds of redundancies at the engineering firm where I worked. But, as the receptionist, I always assumed I’d be fine. Wrongly, as it turned out.
The shock was as much financial as it was emotional. I was single, so there was no second breadwinner to help pay the bills, and though I was mortgage-free, I often lay sleepless in bed wondering what I’d have to sacrifice next to make ends meet.
I was most worried about giving up my love of travel. Every holiday had been spent in far-flung places — the more exotic the better.
yet I’d never considered combining this lust for adventure with paid work. Until then.
It was an epiphany. I was a seasoned traveller and a ‘people person’.
full of excitement, I began applying for jobs as a travel rep — only to feel that enthusiasm drain away as door after door was slammed in my face.
Was it my age? Possibly; but I was convinced I could do the job if someone would give me a chance.
In the end a friend of a friend gave me the break I needed.
Now I work for a firm that specialises in travel for single people, Solo holidays — not for the purposes of dating, but for civilised company on holiday. Each year I do three UK holidays, and seven overseas trips.
I’ll be 63 this summer, fit as a flea and happier than I’ve ever been. Who wants a beige-coloured job behind a dull reception desk when you can have the world?
I finally got my life back SUE DEWEY, 57, lives in Nottingham with her husband, Trevor, 57, an electrical engineer.
Twice, i was fired in my 50s. You go away and lick your wounds, and try hard not to take it personally, but of course it is personal.
Older women are often the first out the door when an organisation restructures. Strangely, none of the men in my team were let go when i was made redundant for the first time, at 53, from a senior management position in a heritage organisation undergoing public sector cuts.
The second time, after almost three years fundraising for another publicly funded institution, a new CEO decided my face didn’t fit.
with no apology, i was ejected from a job i’d put my heart and soul into. i am supremely qualified in this area: for more than 25 years i’ve worked voluntarily for good causes, and in 2006 was awarded an OBE for services to charity.
i’ve seen it happen to many friends across different professions. we are the reality behind the grim statistics — that between 2010 and 2014 the number of women over 50 who were unemployed rose by almost half, while the rise in unemployment overall was one per cent.
i’m not a ‘glass half empty’ person. As i walked out with my P45 for the second time, at 56, i resolved never to put myself at the mercy of an unreasonable boss ever again.
i networked like crazy. Now i lecture in event management, work part-time for elements of the NHS, take on marketing contracts and still raise money for charities.
i’ve lost my paid holiday and healthcare package, but i’m nearing the holy grail of the portfolio worker — spending half the time in the office for the same amount of money i earned as a full-timer. which means i get my life back.
I’m now doing something I love GILL BOCARRO, 56, lives in Buckinghamshire, with her husband, Dave and son, Casey, 18.
MY FAVOURITE subject at school was art. But my parents worried i’d never make a living out of it and insisted i get an office job. i worked hard and by my 50s was a business analyst at BP.
Life was comfortable, and it felt like my career was going from strength to strength. we got used to holidays abroad and my son was doing well at a private football academy.
Then the oil industry hit a rough patch and late last year my job was effectively abolished. i wasn’t the only one to go, but it still makes you feel immensely sad. when i contacted agencies, i was frustrated by the types of jobs they thought i could do — or would want to do. My CV didn’t appear to matter; often it felt as though their commission was more important than finding a suitable role.
i wasn’t falling for that. instead — with my redundancy from BP still in my back pocket — i decided to do what i’ve always wanted to, but never had the courage to make happen. it was time to take a risk.
it’s been 40 years since i was at school, but i’ve gone back to train as a florist. i’m loving it and already have plans to open a business with a friend. Now my life feels much calmer, and smells much sweeter, than it did this time last year.
My life changed for the better LYN MISTRY, 56, lives with her businessman husband, Vic, also 56, in Newbury, Berkshire.
FOR more than a year i lived with the stomach- churning anxiety of knowing my job in publishing was under review, and likely to go. it was like a sword hanging over me.
i don’t cry easily, but when the man from human resources called me in to discuss ‘changes’, i broke down in floods of tears and had to flee the room. By the time the trigger was pulled, i was so tired of it all, i told them to just give me the money and i’d get out quickly.
inside, i was devastated. i was a few months shy of my 50th birthday, and this was the end of a career spanning more than three decades. it felt almost as though my life was over.
i started in publishing in 1978 as an 18-year-old junior production assistant, and by my late 40s had worked my way up to head a multi-millionpound book print buying service. Vic and i were childless by choice and my identity was bound up with my work. To friends and family, i wasn’t Lyn the mother or the wife, i was ‘Lyn who works in publishing’. And without that tag, who was i?
Yet i was also lucky. For years i’d supported Vic while he built up a business in IT and security from our home; now it was paying off.
His success meant i didn’t have to find another job right away, nor — more likely — become a selfemployed consultant vying for short-term contracts with every other newly-redundant fiftysomething in the publishing business.
At first, i took to doing nothing like a duck to water. Vic and i bought a holiday home in Arizona. But i couldn’t be a lady of leisure for ever, and decided to make a business of my passion for vintage clothes. Now a friend and i run vintage fairs across the South-east — a job i enjoy so much it doesn’t even feel like one.
Almost everything about my life has changed for the better. Being forced off the treadmill felt terrible at the time, but now i look back at the pressure and the politics and i don’t regret a thing.