Smartest Money Moves at Any Age

From first job to retirement, we tell you how to manage a dozen events that can change your life.

From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, July 2005

Want to retire early? Think second job

In 2001, when she was 52, Kathleen Mink took an attractive early-retirement package from Verizon that included a pension, extra cash for each year of service and company-provided health insurance. After socking away money from raises and bonuses during her 29 years with the company, Mink had accumulated a tidy amount, and she took her pension as a lump sum to invest on her own.

But she wasn't sure she could make the money last for 40 years or more of retirement. So during her first year of retirement, Mink did a little consulting. A long-time real estate investor, she also bought land in Bethany Beach, Del., and planned to work with contractors to build and sell houses on the property. But when the real estate market heated up in the resort community, Mink discovered she could make more money by selling the lots.

Without her real estate profits, "I probably would have had to go back to work wearing a suit," says Mink, who lives in Silver Spring, Md. Instead, she was able to trade in her business suit for gardening gloves. Always an avid gardener, Mink began helping neighbors beautify their yards. Her reputation grew; now she runs a small landscaping business about 30 hours per week during the growing season and earns about $20,000 a year (not counting volunteer work she does for some of her older neighbors).

When business slows during the winter, Mink makes extra cash running a small personal-service business. She has planned weddings and baby showers, and she stages homes before they go on the market, cleans out basements, helps with property-tax appeals and even does minor plumbing jobs.

Thanks to her various enterprises, Mink, now 56, earns enough that she hasn't had to touch her retirement stash, which she thinks can remain intact until she turns 62. And her active job pays a bonus: "I've never been in better physical shape."

Earning even a little income in early retirement can make a big difference in stretching your savings. Barry Glassman, a financial planner in McLean, Va., routinely asks clients if they could find something they enjoy doing and be paid 25% of their preretirement salary. "A 75% pay cut is better than 100%," says Glassman. -- Kimberly Lankford

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