Boomer Took $2,187 Social Security Early, Struggling to Find a New Job

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with New Jersey resident Donald Malone, 65, who has held various blue-collar roles after leaving the corporate world. Now he’s struggling to find any work and suspects his age and the gaps in his resume have hindered his chances. His words have been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up in northern New Jersey in a middle-class family. I was the first in the family to go to college after high school, going to a community college.

I was undecided about what I wanted to do when I got out of high school. My parents asked me, ‘Where do you want to go? What do you want to do?’ I wasn’t sure what to say. I was interested in science and wanted to be like Neil Armstrong exploring space. I told my parents I wanted to be an astronaut, and they looked at me like I was stupid. They tried to help support me financially in college, which was in the late 70s.

There were these recruiters who came to the school for programming and data processing, and I thought that was interesting. They told us this was a new and rapid career that was moving quickly. So I majored in computer science, and my minor was accounting, though I didn’t finish school.

I worked on IBM equipment, and I was making great money doing it. When I first started in it, I was getting close to $45,000 in the early 80s. I worked with some smaller companies, and I worked for a consulting group that dealt with a lot of retail companies. I transitioned to working for a lot of companies in the fashion industry, working with some consultants doing work for Ralph Lauren and a few others.

By my late 40s, it started to get tough. I had faced layoffs. At one company, I needed slightly more time on a project, and my manager wasn’t happy about it and felt I lied and fired me. His boss felt as though I wasn’t worth being fired and should have received just a warning, but my boss was insistent.

I kept at it and got good money. I never made six digits, but I always made at least $60,000. By 2017, I just got to be kind of disinterested. I just wanted to get out of this business.

I was laid off and collected unemployment, but I just got to the point where I said, ‘I’ve got to start looking at retirement and slowing down.’ It was very stressful work with all this competition and the demand of assignments being done at such and such a time.

Taking Social Security early and switching to blue-collar work

I decided I was going to apply for Social Security early. I thought it was time to consider something different, so I had an employment agency help me out.

I found a job on Craigslist in 2017 for a large German company that makes machines for making paper and cardboard. What I liked about the job was that I traveled to Canada and across the US, and we would go to these mills. I really enjoyed the job. They didn’t really pay much, but they paid for my hotel, my rent, a car, and my travel.

When Covid hit, a lot of this shut down. When Canada decided it was going to shut down the borders, I left that company. I went to Carvana and did detailing. It didn’t pay much, but I enjoyed it. I worked the night shift, though it got to be too much for me physically. I was making less than $30,000, which was a huge drop in salary.

Then I got a job working for a trucking company called Hogan, and they hired me as a driver. One of their big customers was Carmax, so I would go to Carmax and personally drive certain vehicles to another Carmax location. I got the opportunity to drive sports cars. Unfortunately, they laid me off.

I also worked for a senior living facility as a duty supervisor doing easy jobs. It’s almost like a security guard without a gun. But unfortunately in January, I had a stroke and heart attack on the same day. I’m recovering from that now. I was in the ICU for seven days, and unfortunately, they laid me off because they needed somebody to fill that spot quickly.

Struggling to find a high-paying job

I’m just at a standstill. Right now, I’m not doing anything. I’m not a lazy person. The shift from working white-collar to blue-collar jobs was a transition I enjoyed, and I’m glad I made the shift. But now, I can’t even get back into white-collar work. It’s changed with artificial intelligence, and I’m behind on the technology.

I’m getting older now, and I think companies have been looking for younger candidates with more experience than just working with IBM equipment. It’s a rapidly moving career with robotics, artificial intelligence, making games, etcetera. I had an opportunity to work in video games, but I didn’t find an interest in it.

In applications for programming jobs, they wanted to know what languages I program in and then looked at how many years I worked and if there were any gaps. A few of the gaps I had were because either the company went out of business or I faced a layoff. When I got into blue-collar, it was even more years of a gap.

I am looking for blue-collar jobs now. But my wife is a realtor and has been in real estate for 20 years. A large portion of our money comes from my wife working. She’s been encouraging me to join her and work with her as a salesperson for the broker. My wife and I also have a little side business where we take pictures of the outside of houses for banks and realtors. That helps pay grocery bills.

My Social Security of $2,187 a month really just pays my mortgage and my taxes. I’m glad that I filed for it early, especially with the stroke and heart attack. I’ve been able to manage every week with food on my table, clothes on my back, and a roof over my head. I never really was the type of person to spend money like crazy.

I’m not looking to get back into the mainstream companies and putting in a 9-to-5. I’m taking the real estate exam. I’m also hoping to do some little odd jobs. I enjoy working, and I don’t want to be a couch potato and waste the day doing nothing. Ideally, it would be a lower job that isn’t a consistent 9-to-5 working every day.