A GD thread of mine touched on this issue, but I wanted to explore it specifically, since I just read a post that expressed something I see expressed a lot on this board (and that inspired the GD thread): once you hit 40 or so, you’d better stay in your job until retirement, because age discrimination will prevent you from ever finding another above Wal-mart greeter.
As I said, I’ve seen this said on this board often enough to wonder about it, especially given my own age and employment history. Is this sentiment generally true? Will the recession change it for the worse or better? If it is true, does that mean one will have had to have determined his/her entire job/financial future by (the decisions made at) 30 or so (or even earlier)?
40 is too young…though if you are trying to enter a new field then you will hit a wall of age discrimination.
50 is when discrimination really hits from what I’ve seen. You can still get a job in your field but it will be hard.
However, 55 seems to be a wall. If you find yourself unemployed at 55 or greater you might as well retire and starve.
I’m rapidly approaching this time and I pray and hope that if I do find myself unemployed that my years wasted in teaching will bear fruit and I can find a job teaching math again at some community college somewhere.
I should add that one of the reasons this got me thinking is that I read somewhere that you can’t retire on less than a million bucks or so. Given that most people start working at around age 21 or so, so if this sentiment is true, you have less than 20-30 years to make a million dollars plus. I can’t see how this leaves much, if any, margin for error. If you lose more than, say, two or three years to a bad economy, bad decisions, or what have you, are you completely screwed?