MONEY: STAY IN THE GAME
Most of us won’t have enough cash to comfortably retire on. Here’s why – and how – to get a retirement side hustle going.
Groceries: check. Water and electricity: check. Medical aid: check. Going out for dinner: bit of a stretch. Taking that long-awaited trip to Thailand: not gonna happen. Your monthly pension or annuity payouts may be helping you stay above water, but who wants to spend their golden years just getting by? Meet three women whose post-career hustles are helping them to supplement their retirement income, find greater personal meaning and stay engaged.
Just because you’re retired doesn’t mean you have to stop working. In fact, you probably need to keep at it: according to specialist retirement income company Just South Africa (justsa.co.za), about 90 percent of us Saffers reach retirement with insufficient income to maintain our standard of living.
A 2018 study conducted by Just SA found that many South Africans have retirement savings of less than R1 million (from which R5 500 can be drawn monthly) and insufficient assets to support their retirement income needs. And the fact that we’re living about 30 years longer than our great-grandparents means we’re likely to outlive our assets.
Women also typically live four years longer than men, which indicates that it’s mostly women who carry the burden of a sudden drop in income later in life.
Whether you started salting away money a bit late, hit a few bumps on the road to retirement or just want to use your time more meaningfully, you’ll find these women who started microbusinesses with little capital and a whole lot of imagination truly inspiring!
CLASSIC MARMALADE Clare Yeowell
Clare Yeowell (74) has been making artisanal marmalade and jam for about 11 years and has won Silver virtually every time she’s entered a product in the Artisan category of the World’s Original Marmalade Awards in Cumbria, in the UK. It’s a huge contest: about 40 countries are represented and there are about 3 000 entries. Yet Clare started her microbusiness almost on a whim.
‘I was on the PTA at my children’s primary school and we used to run a monthly market to raise funds,’ she says. ‘But at some point I wondered why I was just helping to run the market; I thought I might as well do something. So I picked up a recipe book at CNA on jams and chutneys, and thought, “Okay, I’ll make marmalade.” And it’s the same recipe I use today.’
Clare started working full-time as a qualitative researcher soon after; it was only 20 years later, as she was approaching her sixties, that she took up marmalade making again. ‘It sold well in the ’80s, so I thought I’d give it another go.’
She runs the business with her husband, Don, and has since developed the range, which now consists of 17 delicious varieties of jams, marmalades and relishes, all free of preservatives and artificial additives. ‘At our peak a few years ago we supplied about 10 delis and
five markets,’ Clare says. ‘Three years ago, The Ooh! Box, which supplies members with a monthly box of gourmet products and wine, approached us to supply them. We produced 720 bottles of marmalade in six weeks – all handmade. That’s nearly half a ton of marmalade!’
Clare is on a fixed income that includes a living annuity and investments. ‘I didn’t start the business because I desperately needed more income; I started it because I love cooking and because
I like to do something that earns money. The profits wound up paying for our electricity, our petrol, my hairdresser appointments, going out for dinner on occasion, things like that.’
Best of all, getting Classic Marmalade off the ground didn’t require much capital. ‘My initial investment was on things like bottles, fruit, sugar… it wasn’t a lot. Also, I started very small, with just one market and one deli.’
As for business know-how, drawing on skills she’d acquired during her career days and a bit of research helped Clare to set up her enterprise. ‘I’ve always been good at counting my pennies and not spending more than I could afford,’ she says. ‘And during my days of working at Sealy Posturepedic I’d helped to launch a branch. That’s when I learnt about discounting and mark-ups – all that came back to me. I googled it to remind myself and also began looking into profit margins.’
Her old CNA recipe book came in handy too. ‘That recipe gave me a production run of between 10 and 15 bottles, so I could do a proper costing. I set up a spreadsheet and worked out my cost price on
‘The profits wound up paying for our electricity, our petrol, my hairdresser appointments, going out for dinner on occasion...’
every production run, and I still do that. I’ve never run at a loss
– I might not make a huge profit, but I’ve never been in debt.’
There were other things to consider to get the venture up and running. Clare needed a trading licence from the municipality as well as a certificate of acceptability from the Department of Health to sell commercially. There were also regulations on labelling to take into account.
After more than a decade of successfully supplementing her retirement income, she’s starting to wind down. ‘Markets are tiring and people aren’t buying much in this economy,’ Clare says. ‘It’s also labour-intensive: it takes four hours to do one run of 15 bottles.’
That’s exactly why, she advises, if you want to start a business later in life, do something you really want to do because you have to put in the hours and effort to make it work. ‘If you’re doing it just to make money, it’s not going to work. You need to feel good about it; you need to believe in it – that’s how you’ll have a good product and maintain a good standard.’ classicmarmalades.co.za
THERESA’S TABLE Theresa Lewis
‘The day I walk to my business with a heavy heart, I’m going to stop.’ This is what Theresa Lewis (60) told herself during her 28 years in the hospitality industry, the last 18 of which she spent as owner and chef of Theresa’s Restaurant in Kalk Bay.
‘There was the stress of having to keep the restaurant open all the time, busy season or not,’ she says. ‘I’d also developed the first signs of hypertension and I didn’t want to take this to the next health crisis.’ She sold the business, paid off a few debts and invested in a small renovation of her home in anticipation of her next venture.
‘I thought: “I have so many dinner parties for friends, why not turn that into a business?”’ For the past five years, Theresa has hosted casual fortnightly three-course dinners on Saturday evenings from her home in Kalk Bay for anything between 14 and 25 guests. She sends out a newsletter that includes main course options; people reserve their spot and, on the night, bring along wine (saving her the expense of a liquor licence).
‘I’m involved in everything: waitressing, cooking, chatting to guests…’ she says. ‘I enjoy the social aspect and people seem to enjoy the home environment: guests often happily carry a plate to another table, or fetch their own glass from the cabinet.’
Theresa lives only a few metres from the restaurant she sold and has both a clientele base and a strong network of friends and acquaintances in the area – though her custom hasn’t consisted solely of local regulars: among others, she’s hosted a small wedding ceremony, a Swedish choir, former politicians and prominent legal eagles.
Her decision to start Theresa’s Table was based on a combination of taking her health into account, embracing change and needing extra cash. ‘I can work at my own pace and I earn some income – without the overheads – to supplement what I get in rent from the two apartments I own. I don’t make a fortune, but it does take the edge off those unexpected expenses that always come your way.’
‘I thought: “I have so many dinner parties for friends, why not turn that into a business?”’
Her initial investment to get the small-scale business going was minimal, she says. ‘I had a wall knocked out to open up the space for a bigger dining area. That was the biggest expense; I had most of the other equipment.’ A self-proclaimed ‘closet interior decorator’, she loves trawling junk shops. This meant she didn’t have to buy in too much else. ‘I’ve collected things over the years and just added to them. I had to buy a bit more crockery, cutlery, a few wine glasses and chairs. So it was really a matter of small expenses.’
Much like the restaurant industry, this enterprise also has high and low seasons. ‘I have to do something extra in winter to cover the slow business, which is why I’ve invested in an upright freezer so I can make ready-made meals that people can collect if they don’t feel like cooking.’ Cancellations are another challenge, and in these instances she usually manages to break even. Would she consider cutting costs to mitigate this? ‘I never compromise on quality, because no news spreads faster than bad news; I’d rather increase my prices than cut corners.’
Crucially, the dinners never feel like a slog to her. Quite the opposite – Theresa says she’s rather entertained by what she calls ‘food theatre’. ‘The barriers that exist in a restaurant fall away,’ she says. ‘People just introduce themselves to one another and before you know it, it’s one big party – in fact, I should host a dating dinner!’
She’s come full circle, she says. ‘Before I started my first restaurant in 1991, I constantly had people around for dinner. Now, 20-odd years later, here I am, serving from home again.’ To join Theresa’s mailing list, email her on theresakalkbay@gmail.com
NU HORIZONS Hilary Henderson
Retirement life coach Hilary Henderson (65) is no stranger to new ventures. ‘I was a millennial before the millennials,’ she says with a laugh. ‘My friends often ask: “Which career are you on now?”’
At the moment she’s helping people make the transition to retirement. ‘Retirement is as complicated as leaving school,’ Hilary says. ‘You have to ask yourself: “What am I going to do with my life?”’ That was the very question Hilary asked herself. ‘My mother died at 92; my father’s sister at 99 – I could be retired for 30 years; there was no way I was going to be baking for the church fete at 60.’
The decision to start a coaching business in her later years was spurred by her own career path and transition to retirement, which was anything but smooth. ‘I want to get to people before they retire so they don’t make the mistakes I made.’
Hilary started out as an occupational therapist (OT) in psychiatric wards before doing her MBA and eventually opening a B&B. The business ticked over, but after 10 years, she burnt out. It didn’t get any easier after that. ‘At 58, my next business went belly up,’ she says. ‘I lost a lot of money, which is why I’m having to work now, because I took some money out of my pension.’
She then took up a position running an NGO, expecting to work for another seven years, but interpersonal issues brought that job to an abrupt end. ‘I walked out the day before my 60th birthday with six months’ salary,’ Hilary says. She has a retirement annuity and an investment. Still, she says, ‘I’ve had to become innovative to keep the wolf from the door: I’ve had to rent out half my house and I do anything I can – but I’m passionate about life coaching.’
Coaching is as close to occupational therapy as Hilary could get without being an OT. ‘It was kind of full circle: helping people through exercises on beliefs and values to work out where they want to go and become unstuck,’ she says. ‘I realised it was a good way to work in retirement: I could work for myself and from home, have flexibility and choose how many hours I wanted to work.’
Other than the cost of getting the qualification, there was no need for start-up capital. ‘I just needed a good internet connection as I do a lot of coaching online, nationally and internationally,’ she says.
So how is business going? ‘Coaching is seen as something that’s nice but not essential. That is slowly changing. Certainly, baby boomers think it’s therapy rather than coaching.’ This is why Hilary has decided to draw on her initial field of interest and expand her services. ‘I’ve been coaching the managers at an OT practice and plan to develop that.’
Her advice to retirees? ‘Be open to new ideas. Our age group tends to say, “Oh technology!” But I had to learn to blog, do webinars, coach online and more. My friends are shocked when I talk SEO management, but I’ve spent hours working out how to do it.’ www.nuhorizons.co.za
‘Our age group tends to say, “Oh technology!” But
I had to learn to blog, do webinars, coach online and more.’