Opinion
There’s a worry appearing in the minds of fifty- and sixty-somethings in Australia right now. People who’ve had long, successful careers are lying awake wondering whether their number is coming up before they’re ready.
Whether AI, a restructure, or a shifting market will cut their runway short before they’ve hit their super goal, cleared their mortgage, or got themselves thoroughly prepared.
It’s not an unreasonable fear. According to the ABS, in 2024-25 only one in three Australians retired because they actually chose to, reaching retirement age or becoming eligible for their super on their own terms.
Everyone else was pushed out by health, redundancy, caring responsibilities or circumstances well beyond their control. And that was before AI genuinely entered the workforce equation.
And there’s one thing we’re not telling ourselves loudly enough: it won’t just be one type of worker who feels this next wave. It will be anyone doing work that can be replicated faster, cheaper and more accurately by technology, and that cuts across every level of an organisation.
Great technicians whose craft AI can now match with precision. People in repeatable service roles, like data processors, mid-level analysts and administrators. The common thread isn’t your salary or your seniority, it’s whether your work can be automated.
And in a country where productivity has been pressured for years and is lower than it’s been in a long time, businesses of every size will be asking themselves exactly that question.
But here’s what I want to say to anyone sitting in that worry without taking action: fear is not a strategy. This week on my podcast, I spoke with Jannine Fraser, Managing Director of Directioneering, one of Australia’s most respected outplacement firms.
She works at the coalface of career transition every single day, and her message was clear. The job market is tightening, roles are taking longer to fill, and many advertised positions are being withdrawn before anyone is hired.
But the people who navigate this well are the ones who got intentional before it happened, not after. So here are six things worth doing right now, while you still have time and options on your side.
If you think about your core skills and what genuinely interests you, there are usually far more possibilities than you first realise.
1. Invest in your employability like an asset
Most of us in our fifties invest carefully in our financial assets. We maintain and renovate our homes, review our share portfolios, and sell what’s underperforming. And yet, we often completely neglect the single most valuable asset we have at this stage of life: our ability to work.
Your employability could generate more return between now and retirement than your home and investment portfolio combined, and most people treat it like a set-and-forget.
Jannine’s advice here is pointed. People going for jobs in their fifties shouldn’t be putting more than the last ten years of experience on their CV. Hiring managers aren’t interested in what you were doing in 1998. They want to know what you can do now.
That means staying current in your field, knowing what’s happening in your industry, keeping your LinkedIn presence alive, and being genuinely curious about where your sector is heading.
Staying connected to relevant people in your broader sphere is one of the most powerful things you can do to protect your employability. Do it now, not when you need it.
2. Look the part
This one might sting a little, but Jannine raised it on the podcast and she’s right. How you show up physically matters. Not in a superficial way, but in a very practical one.
If you’re walking into an interview in a shirt that’s been in your wardrobe since 2012 and has bulging buttons, or your fitness has slipped to the point where your energy levels show it, those things register with a hiring manager.
Her advice is simple: stay fit, look current, and present with energy. Always choose face to face over Zoom if you’re given the option, and if you’re not given the option, ask for it.
3. Think lattice, not ladder
There’s a pressure that builds in the later stages of a career where you feel like you either keep climbing the ladder into bigger and higher paying jobs, or you’ve somehow failed. But what if you stepped back and thought about the next phase of your working life not as a ladder but as a lattice?
A lattice gives you permission to move sideways, explore, and follow threads you’ve been curious about for years. As Jannine said, if you expect to keep doing the same job in a different place for the rest of your working life, it’s exceptionally unlikely.
But if you think about your core skills, your experience, and what genuinely interests you, there are usually far more possibilities than you can see from where you’re sitting right now.
4. Build your cash buffer
We’ve all heard the old rule about keeping three months of living costs as a buffer in case you lose your job, the idea being that three months is roughly how long it takes to land another role. But if you’re in your fifties or sixties, that number needs a serious rethink.
Jannine sees senior people taking much longer in the current market, with more competition, fewer roles, and plenty of positions quietly disappearing before they’re filled.
Realistically, building six to twelve months of accessible living costs, held completely separately from your super and your investment portfolio, gives you some real breathing room.
It means you’re not forced to take the first offer out of desperation, not drawing down investments at the wrong time, and not making panicked decisions under financial pressure.
Park it in a high-interest savings account or some easily accessed and sensibly risk-weighted investments where it’s earning something useful while it waits, and think of it less as a safety net and more as a negotiating tool.
5. Stress-test your financial plan
Beyond the cash buffer, now is the time to take a hard look at your broader financial picture and find where the resilience is. Check that you know what you need to spend on your cost of living. Yes –if you don’t have a current budget, build one.
Make sure you understand your retirement savings target in super and outside. And, ask yourself a question most people avoid: if I didn’t hit my big super goal number, what’s the minimum I could genuinely retire on?
Understanding your floor gives you options and takes some of the panic out of worst-case thinking.
Then look at your debt. The last decade before retirement is one of the most powerful financial windows of your life for paying down your mortgage and clearing anything else you’re carrying, so you don’t drag it into retirement with you.
If that runway gets cut short, it creates pressure on two fronts at once: you can’t top up savings as planned, and you may need to fund living costs for longer than expected. Get smarter about your situation, and model the scenarios so you can build a genuine plan B.
6. Follow a thread toward your passions now
Here’s the one that rarely comes up in conversations about redundancy risk, but I think it matters just as much as the financial piece. Jannine made a point on the podcast that stayed with me: if you want to do volunteer work in retirement, do it while you’re still working so you have explored where you might want to go.
Because the people who say they’ll get around to it rarely do. Building a connection to something that interests you before you need it, not after, means you already have somewhere to belong, something to contribute, and a sense of identity that isn’t entirely wrapped up in your job title and the exchange of time for money.
You don’t have to make a dramatic pivot. Start with curiosity. As I explore in my book, curiosity works like a cycle: once you find something that genuinely interests you, it generates its own dopamine-driven momentum.
One small thread leads to another, and before long you have a direction. That direction is what makes the difference between people who land well after a career disruption and people who feel completely lost.
Bec Wilson is author of the bestseller How to Have an Epic Retirement and the newly released Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife. She writes a weekly newsletter at epicretirement.net and hosts the Prime Time podcast.
- Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.
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Bec Wilson is the author of How To Have An Epic Retirement and writes a weekly newsletter for pre- and post-retirees at epicretirement.net.
