How To Make Money In Retirement? 5 Creative Ways

Retirement is that golden period of our life when we’re away from earning an active income from a job or business. Most of us believe in enjoying those years since there would be no more stressful commutes between the workplace and home or anxiety and other stuff caused by a job or business.

We think of those years in retirement as a time to enjoy and do whatever we wanted to do earlier. Some of us also prepare a bucket list of things to do before we depart from Earth. And we hope to fulfil all these things on the bucket list.

All these thoughts are fair enough. Indeed, you deserve to rest and relax after several years of working and providing for the household. You need that reward for all the struggles you’ve undergone from childhood till the age of 60 years.

Unfortunately, some of us seem to forget that retiring happily requires a lot of money. In fact, much more than we needed when we were working. We need this money at a time when we’re no longer earning an active income, and possibly, we’re not even in a situation to earn in retirement due to health issues.

As a matter of fact, most Americans are not prepared for their retirement when it comes to money.

Americans with Little or No Retirement Money

This might come as a shock to many. Some 50 per cent of all American women don’t have money for their retirement or have very little, according to the United States Census Bureau.

In fact, USCB, a federal organization, also finds that some 47 per cent of men in the USA have little or no retirement savings. The USCB lists several factors why Americans have lesser savings for those retirement years. These include multiple marriages and divorce, children, relocation and lots more.

All of us are aware that we can’t stop ageing since time cannot be controlled. Nor can we prevent retirement, despite the fact that we could extend our service or job by two or more years. And some of us are also aware that we would require more medical care and medicines after retirement due to age-related issues.

The Question of Inflation

Therefore, the question arises, how to ensure that we have enough money for retirement? What’re the guarantees that we would have enough cash on hand to meet all our needs, including living costs and medicines after retirement?

My honest answer to both these questions is simple: There are simply no guarantees that you or I would have enough money for those golden years while retiring. Also, there’re no guarantees that the cash we have in savings and investments at the time would be enough for us to spend the rest of our lives.

This happens because of inflation. By July 2022, the inflation in the USA stood at a whopping 8.5 per cent. That means the $1,000 that you had in hand in July last year is worth only $915 now when we compare the buying power.

Then, we also have the Time Value of Money or TVM. Under the TVM calculation, the buying power of our money drops by 4.5 per cent every year. This further means that your money is losing its value over a span of every 12 months.

What Does This mean?

What does this mean for us? In simple words, it means that some of us won’t have enough money for our retirement years. It also means that we would have to find more income during these retirement years.

Such additional income can come from returns of our plans, savings and investments made before retirement. Or, the money can come from any work after retirement.

The issue with retirement plans and their income or even Social Security payments is that there’re no guarantees the money can overcome the problems of inflation. Of course, if you’ll be getting large sums of money, that isn’t something to worry about.

But, if you’re still wondering whether your money will be enough all life from the time you retire, I suggest that you consider any of these five best ways to earn after retirement. 

In fact, thousands of Americans are using some of these ways to make sure they have enough cash on hand, even during their golden years.

Also Read: Money Saving Tricks For The Retirees.

Also Read: How To Plan Your Retirement?

Five Best Ways to Make Money in Retirement

Understandably, you might feel a bit disappointed when I say that there’re five best ways to earn after retirement. It’s likely you would believe that I’m asking you to take up a part-time job or even full-time work. Of course not. If I ask you to work or take any job, you will not be retiring at all. In fact, that would defeat the entire purpose and concept of retirement.

Instead, I will be discussing five ways to earn money after retirement where you really don’t need to work. In fact, you can do these things now, before retirement and get the payouts when you retire.

1. Create a Course

One of the best ways to earn after retirement is by creating a course and selling it online. You can create any course that you like. It could be from your hobby or your job. There’re customers for all kinds of courses around the world.

Platforms such as Udemy, among others, allow you to create your own course and upload it online. To do so, you will have to create an account on Udemy or any other similar platform. These platforms provide free resources for everyone that wishes to make a course and sell.

Of course, the service of selling a course isn’t free. These platforms charge you some money. However, this money is debited directly when any person buys your course.

Share your experience with skills, tips, tweaks and other things that you learned at your job or business to make this course. Or, simply make a course on some hobby such as playing a sport or cooking or anything that people would like. There’s no shortage of subjects on which you can take courses and sell online.

This way, you can earn even after retirement. The only thing is that you might have to upgrade the course occasionally, to match the latest trends and technologies.

2. Write a Book

You don’t need to be a great author to write a book. In fact, every great author in the world was a beginner somewhere. You, too can start writing a book now and publish it for free. It is one of the best ways to earn after retirement.

Again, there are no shortages of ideas to write a book. You could write about your own journey in life or something about your profession or a hobby. It is also possible to write short stories and compile them in a larger book. If you’re poetic or love poetry, compose them and compile them in a book for selling to other poetry lovers.

All kinds of books sell in the market. The bestsellers are, however, true-life stories and fiction. Therefore, select any genre that you like and start writing. There’re no limits on how much you can write as long as you can create a superb book and publish it for free to put on sale. Here’s how to publish and sell your book.

Ever heard of Kindle Desktop Publishing? Maybe not. I will explain what is Kindle Desktop Publishing, or KDP, is, a service from Amazon, the single-largest online retailer in the world. This is a free service. KDP provides a lot of free resources for authors to write, create, proofread and publish their books.

Once your book is ready, you can sell it through Amazon. Maybe you’re aware that Amazon is also one of the largest booksellers online in the world. Therefore, you can easily sell your book through their online store.

While there’re no exact estimates about how much money you can make from selling books from Amazon, some users of KDP and their service claim to make at least $500 per month. Some have claimed to earn as much as $10,000 per month.

In any case, writing, creating, publishing and selling a book is much easier nowadays than it was 20 years ago. Writing a book and selling it online gives you a superb source of passive income.

Meaning you don’t have to keep working after retirement to earn money. Just for your knowledge, books on Amazon can be sold for as low as $4.99 or even given for free. On average, authors charge $9.99 per book or higher. Amazon keeps part of the proceeds as their fees.

Also Read: How Much Money Do Authors Make Per Book?

Also Read: How to Write Your Own EBook, Sell It and Make Money?

3. Start your Own Blog

Starting your own blog is much easier than you could imagine. In fact, a blog can earn you a lot of money and even make you a millionaire if you get things right. To begin with, I suggest that you read any superb tutorial or watch a YouTube video on how to start your own blog.

Similar to creating a course or writing a book, you have countless choices when selecting a theme for your blog. You can start a blog about your profession and teach people how to do things in their jobs. Or, you can simply speak about your hobbies and passions to create the blog.

All you need is some superb writing skills with the ability to convince people and basic knowledge of blogging that you can get free from any online course or other resources.

To start your own blog, you will require an excellent domain name and website hosting. Nowadays, you can get both of these in the US for as low as $9.99 per year.

You can write whenever you want. There’re no compulsions to work or no fixed times and deadlines to meet. However, to make a blog successful, it is recommended to have at least one new post or content every second day. That means three to four posts every week.

Monetizing the blog is fairly easy. Once you have a specific number of followers, you can subscribe free to Google AdSense. This means you’re allowing Google to display ads on your blog site.

You get paid for these ads, especially when someone clicks on them. It’s possible to earn more money by accepting paid or sponsored posts and affiliate marketing of hot-selling items.

Also Read: How To Write a Blog Post?

4. Become a Mentor

Give your knowledge earned all these years to persons that are struggling at their jobs and life. This is one of the noblest things you can do after retirement to earn.

There’re thousands of people that wish to learn your skills or know how to do certain things in life, such as save money or even marry.

They're two different ways to become a mentor. One of them is by signing up as a mentor at any of the large companies that offer the service to budding professionals. The other is by launching your own mentorship classes online or even offline if you like.

If you’re considering that mentoring others is work, think twice. Not many seniors get the opportunity to share their experiences, knowledge and skills with others. By mentoring, you could be one of those few retirees that’re helping people and yet, making some money.

In fact, mentoring is one of the best ways to stay younger and alert at mind. When you meet and interact with other people, you automatically feel fresher and more energetic.

It helps take away the boredom that you could experience after retirement when you suddenly have so much extra time on your hands.

5. Financial Consultant

A financial consultant doesn’t really need to work daily. However, you should have the necessary qualifications to work as a financial consultant.

That’s because you will be dealing with people and their money. These persons will invest or save money based on your advice, and hence, you have to ensure they don’t lose anything.

By any standards, financial consultants, also known as financial advisors or personal financial advisors, are in great demand in the USA. They charge a fixed hourly rate and can earn more than $80,000 per year before taxes.

With such a large income, you wouldn’t have to depend on annuities, Social Security payouts and other such income for your retirement.

Additionally, as a financial consultant, you can also get commissions from various financial institutions for promoting their products such as insurance, Mutual Funds and Exchange Traded Funds, accounts and other investment plans.

This is a wonderful way to earn money after retirement if you have a large social circle or can provide superb financial advisory services to the public.

Financial consultants are also highly respected in society for their work. You’ll require excellent skills to convince your customers about these plans that you will promote.

In Conclusion

Generally, most seniors and retirees experience some level of boredom after they stop doing their regular jobs and retire. In some cases, such boredom can lead to stress and anxiety or even depression.

When you use any of these five best ways to earn after retirement, you will not suffer much boredom and hence, can avoid stress and other negative effects of not working actively any longer. These best five ways also pay you a good monthly income.

Therefore, I would recommend that you take at least one of these five best ways to earn money after retirement.