The Script Is Flipped

When I was accepted and decided to attend Simmons College, I was filled with excitement, anticipation and I had high expectations for myself and the knowledge that would be bestowed upon me. The four years I spent at Simmons went by so quickly and I learned that I had more skills and talents than I knew what to do with. I typed papers, sewed clothes and sold jeans and tops to the student population for pocket money.
            I knew that with my diploma in hand that I would master just about  any challenge that was presented to me. I grew up thinking that hard work, diplomacy and being a life-long learner was the key to success. I have worked with fortune 500 companies as well as small privately owned companies and I always performed to the best of my ability, asked for constructive feedback, was a team player, kept my skills up to date, and received merit increases for my efforts.

            After working for a software company for 16 years, I decided to get off the road doing consulting and application development and set my sights on obtaining my graduate degree in adult education and moving over to training and teaching adults on a full-time basis. Unfortunately, two weeks before I was due to graduate, I was laid off. Not so bad, it just didn't happen on my schedule. I saw the layoff as an opportunity to explore other avenues especially entrepreneurship.

            A year and a half later, I accepted a position with a big insurance company in New Jersey and I was able to work from home in Georgia. Sweet! I immediately started getting busy with starting a business that I could do part-time and finding a mentor to help me along the way as well as partner with someone who was like-minded.

At the age of 50 years, I saw myself working until I was 65, being able to live off my 401K account, collecting SSI and working my business for additional income and then, the bottom fell out and everyone lost thousands of dollars from their retirement accounts overnight! The script got flipped on us, the baby boomers!