Are you interested in starting a business after retirement? If YES, here are 50 best after retirement business ideas for retirees. When you retire, this is the time that you must be rewarding yourself for years of hardworking. It is the time to travel, to celebrate with friends and loved ones, and to pamper self.
However, what is happening is otherwise because of the fear of lack. Yes, there is a retirement fund that you can spend but you are being controlled by the “What if I ran out of funds? Or what is an emergency matter happens?” questions.
Before you get overwhelmed and spoil your supposed to be fun and fulfilling retirement, think that there are lots of earning opportunities that you can work on even if you are already a retiree. Perhaps you’ve been in the same job for decades before your retire.
You’ve been an employee always and never a boss. As you retire, it’s time to be a boss by building a business same as the line of your previous job. This is the best time to extract all lessons learned and be one of the competitive businesses in the market. Here are 50 of some of the opportunities you have as a retiree;
Best After Retirement Business ideas
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Sell the Good Old Stuff
If you are fond of collecting things when you were young, do you keep them intact? It is time to share those good old stuff to the younger ones. Try selling those with little value to you but you think will have more value to others. When you do your selling, do not sell as of you are holding a garage sale.
Be wise by grouping your stuff and sell them by season. Through this, you are sure to have better sales since you can target particular needs of people in that season you are selling.
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Write Books
Are you fond of blogging? If you have been blogging for long, this is the best time to gather all ideas and aspirations you poured out into your personal blog and publish it as a book. Who knows, it could be the next best seller? All the experience you’ve gathered in all your years of working can be channeled into writing or blogging.
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Become a Trainer in Skills
If you have been at your best in your craft while you were working, you can share your mastery through training. You can conduct classroom or practical training and earn from it. It need not be complicated; just a short but will be beneficial training is enough.
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Buy a Property to Rent out
Rental income can be defined as a pure passive income. You can even outsource the routine maintenance work on your rental property to others. If you have the resources, you can buy a property. You can use your retirement package to fund this mortgage. This will not entail too much work from your end. It will just require you to visit and check monthly at the most.
Retirees who enjoy working with students might enjoy being a teaching assistant or a tutor. Universities sometimes hire teaching assistants for a small hourly wage or a flat fee. Tutors, on the other hand, can be self-employed or work with a larger organization.
If you like teaching kids, you can work as a tutor to a particular subject you are interested; or you can be a personal academic tutor. Again, this type of job won’t need much time.
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Errand Service
People are most of the time too busy to run errands or pay their bills. This is a good business with an easy task. You can start with the neighborhood. Tell them that you can pay and do errands on their behalf for a minimum fee.
If you have a place that you like going to from time to time; or you have tourist spot in your local area, you can apply as a tour guide.
Since this will just be a part-time job, you won’t need a salary as an employee tour guide. Just make sure you’ll be an active tour guide who can make the tour worth remembering. Review you history subject and make your own tour guide piece. You can also sell tour keepsakes.
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Sell Home Made Foods
Cooking is fun. You can easily sell them especially if you have a competitive price. However, the competition among sellers may be stiff. A good trick you can use is to look for offices (it can be your previous office) where you can sell your meals. Negotiate with their HR team and have a contract with them. By doing this, you are assured of making profit.
- Networking and Marketing
Look for a product or a company that you can do referrals. You can choose between offline and online set-up. Online set-up is more convenient though since it will not require much movement from one place to the other. You just need to spend time looking for prospects in the internet. Most are incorporating network and marketing into their personal blogs and through social media updates.
Retired individuals with advanced degrees or specialized experience can consider a career in consulting. Consultants can leverage their years of expertise, training, and connections and set their hours to avoid a full-time workload. For example, retirees with experience in programming, website development, finance, and litigation are highly sought after.
In fact, many companies can afford to pay consultants high fees because they don’t have to pay for their benefits. One drawback, however, is that you might find demand for your skills sporadic. This depends on where you live and how quickly you build your clientele.
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School Traffic Attendant
You should apply through the city or school board. A bit of search and online application (for some cities, they accept walk in application only). So, research shows this job is under stuffed. This might be the case in your area. So $10 an hour is not bad for couple of hours a day. Also, you like helping others, don’t you? Assisting little children to cross busy roads is very satisfying job.
This can be a tedious task if you will be maintaining big gardens. Just choose small gardens in the area and have this only for twice and thrice a week. Do not do this every day as it may tire you or may make you sick. If you have those “green hands,” you can offer garden set-up for your neighbors. Build a small veggie farm for them or a flower garden too.
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Call Centre Jobs
In a call center, employees spend most of their time sitting and talking on the phone, which can be great for seniors with low mobility. In fact, a number of companies allow customer service representatives to work from home.
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RV and Camping Services
Many couples see retirement as the time to start a life on the open road, trading in commuting cars for RVs. Almost 9 percent of U.S. households headed by a person older than 55 currently own an RV, and with gas prices climbing, these new road hogs probably wouldn’t mind making a buck or two while rolling across the country.
This is one of the best steps to take in starting a business as a retiree. This is because you will be solving the problems of people as regards having a sumptuous meal. This is easy to start and has a very low startup cost.
This industry is similar to the bed-and-breakfast business, except property manager’s work on site at a property owned by another person or company. As the title suggests, these professionals oversee the day-to-day operation of a commercial or residential property. In exchange, employers offer rent-free living and utilities, as well as a salary, and sometimes benefits.
Pet sitting appears to be one business that will continue to offer opportunities for growth despite the economic downturn. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. households have a pet, including some 73 million dogs, 90 million cats and 16 million birds, along with fish, hamsters and other animals.
Last year, Americans spent an estimated $47.7 billion on them. Pet sitters are professional animal caregivers who look after pets at the owner’s home while the pet parent is away at work, on vacation or elsewhere.
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Open a Franchise
Running a franchise can provide a great blend of structure and freedom, which is great, especially if you’ve been working under someone your whole career. Franchises are a valid way to pursue your passion or interest without having to start everything from the ground up. Innovation still exists to a reasonable extent and you can look to the franchises of others for guidance and assurance.
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Blogging
It’s not going to happen overnight, but by creating a credible, well-followed blog with valuable, expert advice, it’s possible to bring in more than mere pennies for your thoughts. The blog can be the tip of a start-up iceberg by promoting a service or product and bringing in funding, or it could be a form of self-advertising for a reputable, specialized, and knowledgeable blogging business.
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Professional Speaking
Just because you’ve retired doesn’t mean that you’ve lost the ability to grab the attention of others and speak with boardroom authority.
A professional speaking start-up has endless potential. You can market yourself to be an expert speaker in your industry, infuse excitement and creativity into office retreats and brainstorming sessions, or be a motivational as well as problem-solving speaker for a variety of niche audiences in offices, events, or conferences.
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Daycare
Childcare remains a constant need for busy families. You can babysit as needed for friends, family, and neighbors for extra income, or offer daily childcare services in your home.
In most places, you don’t need a license to run a babysitting service from home if you keep your child headcount below a certain number. With more parents needing to work, offering a home-based child care situation can be a great way to start a business and stay home with your own kids, too.
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Researcher
As a retiree, you can venture into researching as you’ve read or heard a lot. Researchers, especially genealogists, are surprisingly in demand right now. This may be due to the fact that people are getting sentimental these days or that some politicians are finding new class of voters from their ancestry but there is a growing demand for people who enjoy researching other people’s ancestry.
While we may be able to see exactly what someone else needs in a particular situation, figuring it out your own life isn’t always as easy.
That’s where a life coach or mentor can be of help, especially if you specialize in a specific area. This particular business idea is lucrative because it’s inexpensive to get started and the fields of specialty are endless. You can coach or mentor in any area from sports to weight loss, organization to personal happiness.
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Translator
There’s no denying the global marketplace is growing and reaching beyond the borders of China and Mexico. All that cross-cultural communication is creating a growing need for translators. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook, the hiring of interpreters and translators is projected to grow by 46 percent by 2022, much faster than the average for all occupations.
This means it’s a big business opportunity for entrepreneurs who can bring foreign-language speakers together with businesses in need.
Pet sitters and dog walkers help pet owners in their area care for their furry friends. This is a business that doesn’t require a lot of overhead cost. A really easy mobile business idea to get into. All that’s required is a love of pets and some decent walking shoes.
Charge a flat fee plus a time based pricing increments (15 minute intervals), larger dogs generally require walking for longer periods of time. People really love their pets and this is a growth market with lots of expansion opportunities.
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Knitting, Alteration and Sewing Services
If you have talent with a needle and thread, you may want to put that talent to work. Your sewing skills can be the key to a number of business opportunities, from mending and sewing custom clothes to creating homespun projects and selling them online.
A good number of people are non-conformist and prefer custom made sweaters, carpets, towels and blankets. The only thing you need is a large loom to do the knitting. The services can be marketed through local trade fair or you can sell directly to local stores.
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Data Entry
Perhaps not the most thrilling of home based business idea, but data entry can nevertheless offer an extremely steady (not to mention flexible) source of extra income. You generally get paid for the number of entries you make rather than by the hour, which means you can go back and forth to it when you get a spare few minutes.
With a free garage in which you can convert into an office for data entry, the benefit of the garage is the total concentration it offers to you as a data entry professional; the business needs total concentration and absence of distraction.
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Florist
Creating beautiful flower arrangements can be a fun activity for anyone with an eye for design and a love of plants. And you can turn that activity into a career by selling flower arrangements and other plants that you create in your home.
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Career Coaching
Want to help and inspire people for a living? Starting a career coaching practice could be the key to doing what you love and making a difference.
Through career coaching you can work with clients of all ages, from young people who don’t know what career path to pursue or how to land their dream job, to older people looking for a career change. Help prep clients for interviews, improve their résumés and find their passions.
Groceries are amongst the basic things that American cannot do without. Therefore, starting a business in this line would be the right step in the right direction. Good news is that starting this business isn’t a herculean task. What is more, you can be sure to get good returns on your investment.
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Flier Distribution Service
All you need is a telephone and good walking shoes. You can employ casual staff to help scale your business. Research what the current flier delivery services are charging. Flier distribution is a very easy business as all you have to do is to keep on passing on the fliers and you are also advertising your own services to potential clients.
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Senior Relocation Services
After retirement, seniors tend to downsize from the homes they had lived in for years or the large condos they owned into smaller condos and apartments.
Although the movers could handle the actual moving there was still a great deal of organizing and planning that needed to be done as well as work in getting things where they belong in the new and smaller living space. You can start out by helping friends accomplish this and transform into a good sized senior relocation organization.
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Small Repairs Services
If you have the expertise you can start your own repair business. Either limit it to small electronics only or offer general electronic repairs. To limit costs, ask clients to bring their small electronics to you. Make sure to have a plan for getting spare parts quickly to reduce your stock holding costs. You can learn how to do this through books and videos.
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Shop For Others
As great as getting paid to go shopping may sound at first blush, there’s much more to providing the right kind of service and creating a sustainable business as might at first be apparent. A personal shopping service may be operated in conjunction with other services, say, an image consulting business perhaps.
As a personal shopper, you combine the talent of finding that perfect item with a potentially more important business that helps people feel better about themselves and how they look.
Soaps are part of the products that are manufactured from chemical products and they are used for washing and for bathing. No doubt there is a large market for soaps and the industry is still pretty much open for as many people that are ready to start their own soap making company.
So, if you are looking for a simple business to start in the chemical industry, a business that requires few weeks or months of training and one that you can start on a small scale, then you should consider going into soap making business.
If you are handy you can create from homeowners, senior citizens and others who don’t want to fix it themselves. Advertise in shopper publications and on bulletin boards, and drop off fliers at real estate offices. Then start repairing everything from leaky faucets to broken windows.
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Selling Used Goods
You can venture into selling used-goods that others throw out and makes small purchases at yard sales and sells them on Craigslist. By regularly checking the alleys and the front of people’s homes on garbage collection day. Valuable items such as baby items, bunk beds, video games and electronics sell well.
Don’t be surprised at what people discard especially those with value. This business is for seniors who are not afraid of getting into other people’s junk. After a while you learn what will sell and what will not.
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Concierge Business
This business entails running errands for clients. Errands such as buying groceries, shopping for gifts, arranging parties, making vacation plans, seeing their pets are taken care of while clients are on vacation, etc. You can start by doing this for friends and with time it will be turned into a full-time job. During holidays, you will need to expand and hire reliable people as you will experience a busy schedule.
With your wealth of experience working, you would have seen and read lots of resume especially if you work in human resource department. You can channel this knowledge to help people write their resumes. Not everyone knows how to look good on paper.
With your editing and basic layout skills, a laser printer, and some high-quality stationery, you’re set to start showing clients how to put their best foot forward in their resumes and cover letters–and how to get in the door of potential employers’ businesses for an interview.
Some websites pay for articles, but unless they’re commissioning your original work, you won’t make big bucks. Yahoo! Voices and Helium are a good way to build an online portfolio of published work while making some money at the same time.
MyEssays.com allows essay writers to sell their original work starting at $10 for a short essay and up to $100 for comprehensive work. Writerfind.com lists a range of freelance opportunities for experienced writers to pursue on their own. Another option is freelance writing for magazines, trade publications, newsletters or local newspapers.
Solo event planners can be responsible for organizing events of all kinds from meetings to corporate events. Entrepreneurs can create a niche in the market by specializing in specific events, including concerts, corporate retreats, or art exhibits.
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Online Selling
Back then in the days, there used to be only telemarketing as a marketing tactic. But today, there’s online marketing. Small businesses that don’t have enough money to go for the big call center companies usually hire individuals online to sell and market their products.
There are many who make a good living selling online. You could start by selecting things that you have around the house and list them on eBay, Craigslist or Amazon.com. Once you decide if this is something you wish to spend more time doing you can purchase things to sell. If you purchase the right products at the right price you should be able to make a good profit.
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Direct Selling
There are literally hundreds of firms for you to choose from should you be interested in representing them. In most cases companies that involve direct selling require you to purchase some product for you to sell but the “starter kit” of training materials is generally not very expensive.
Legitimate direct selling companies allow you to “sell back” unsold products that are in good condition if you decide this isn’t for you.
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Bookkeeping
Another idea you should consider is to start a bookkeeping service and help people keep records of their income and expenses and even prepare financial statements. If you have a passion for this kind of business as a retiree you can combine this with yet other businesses.
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Dress Making
You could also put your sewing skills to use by making and selling clothing items for babies and adults, bed sheets and pillow cases, stuffed animals, pet clothes, cloth diapers or duvets. These products will sell especially if you target fellow seniors and kids who love dresses.
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Online Tutoring
If you love teaching but cannot cope with the stress of becoming a school teacher, you could become a tutor on the internet instead. There are several websites where you could apply to for online tutoring jobs and get paid nice commission.
Tutorial services especially online are very popular right now and the most common subject being taught is English language.
You could also consider becoming a property manager. You could start with helping neighbors, friends or members of your local group to look for people to rent or lease their vacant properties. Again, this is a business that can be done conveniently from home.
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Virtual Customer Service Agent
A growing work-from-home opportunity is to answer the inbound customer calls for companies like 1-800-flowers, Virgin Atlantic, J. Crew or other retailers. Employers like these, and many others like them, outsource their customer service calls to companies that hire U.S. based virtual agents.
You can usually set your own hours and pick an employer whose products or services are suited to your knowledge and interests. You can expect to make between $8 and $15 an hour depending on your experience, call volume and accounts.
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Telemarketing
Many companies and organizations outsource their cold-calling campaigns to call centers and third parties. They hire full-time and temporary workers, many of whom work from home to place those calls. Your job could be: debt collection, soliciting donations, persuading people to try a product or service, booking or confirming appointments, etc.
Usually you will be paid by the hour plus performance-based commission. Some of these jobs pay commission only. While some training can be provided, applicants are expected to have some high-quality cold-calling or customer service experience.
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Elder Care
There are lots of home for the aged institutions out there. You need not do the job of an elderly nursing aid. You can just apply as some who will prepare their things, who will prepare their food at the table, and other simple tasks. For an added twist, you can sing songs for them; facilitate simple games, and other entertaining activities.
In conclusion, working after retirement can provide a wonderful opportunity to work on your own terms. Many companies appreciate older workers’ experience and provide flexible, rewarding jobs. There are many ways to leverage your passion and experience into a rewarding post-retirement career – but don’t think you’re too old to learn any new tricks.