This Hasbro employee was just laid off after 25 years of designing toys for brands like Transformers, G.I. Joe and Pokémon — here’s how to bounce back after a job loss in your 50s

Assessing the obstacles

Those newly bereft of steady income as they pass 50 also face the double bind of paying for health insurance and re-entering an employment marketplace where age stacks the deck against them.

While you can keep your employer’s health insurance up to 18 months after you’re let go, it comes at a steep price. KFF’s 2024 Employer Health Benefits Survey found that the annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage reached $25,572 this year. That’s a jump of 7% from the year before and up nearly 50% from 2014. Now guess who foots the total bill once you're laid off?

In February, a story in The Atlantic proclaimed that “GoFundMe Is a Health-Care Utility Now.” In fact, in 2019, GoFundMe’s CEO told CBS that about one-third of all funds raised on the platform go to medical campaigns. So it was for Warden after he lost his job; he started a GoFundMe to address an “absolutely urgent” situation.

“My fiancée Meaghan Elderkin suffers from … Crohn’s Disease,” Warden wrote. “She has survived a total of 20 lower abdominal surgeries in the past 15 years.” Though the American Journal of Public Health has found that only 12% of U.S. medical campaigns met their goals, Warden successfully raised $21,413 — just enough to finance two months of Meaghan’s pain management medication.

Assuming Warden or others with decades of experience need to restart the job hunt, ageism presents a stubborn obstacle. For starters, employers can easily sweep it under the rug simply by refusing to grant you an interview.

In AARP’s Work and Jobs Data Series, nearly one in six adults aged 50-plus (14%) reported they were not hired for a job they applied for within the past two years because of their age. Among those with jobs, two in three of that demographic (64%) think older workers face age discrimination in the workplace today.

Kiss your credit card debt goodbye

Millions of Americans are struggling to crawl out of debt in the face of record-high interest rates. A personal loan offers lower interest rates and fixed payments, making it a smart choice to consolidate high-interest credit card debt. It helps save money, simplifies payments, and accelerates debt payoff. Credible is a free online service that shows you the best lending options to pay off your credit card debt fast — and save a ton in interest.

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Four steps to bounce back

While feelings of shock and paralysis are completely understandable in the wake of a job loss, it’s crucial to avoid rumination and begin recalibration as soon as possible. Warden’s fundraiser represents a textbook move in the right direction. Here are four more moves to consider.

Subscribe to job email feeds. Sites like Indeed and LinkedIn offer free email services for job-opening alerts. You can customize the alerts for the positions you’re seeking, location and full- or part-time status.

Network your way back into employment. If you’ve spent years building a LinkedIn base (Warden has 500-plus connections), now’s the time to work it. CNBC cites research showing “that anywhere from half to upwards of 80% of jobs are filled through networking.” It’s a potent tactic, especially when used with those email feeds.

Take the solopreneur route. The one job no one can take from you — for age or any reason — is the one you create for yourself. You can do it through fractional employment in several posts, a version of moving side hustles to front and center. Or, leverage your experience to enter promising niches. Laid-off journalists, for example, will find that as college essay advisers they can charge $150 per hour on average. Do that for 13 hours a week and you’ve cleared the annual six-figure mark.

Assess your finances. Don’t just assume everything will work out. The financial plan for you or your family up until this point now needs reconsideration. Financial advisers are uniquely qualified to help you recompile the numbers and evaluate your options moving forward.

Maybe you’ll discover that financially, you’re more set to retire than you think: that the employer’s loss is your gain, especially in time. Now that deserves a board game fit not just for passing “go” but happily gone.