I am going to be 63 in June. I have run my own business (Advertising) for 26 years. About 10 years ago, I noticed that all my clients were now younger than I was.
For a while, this was an advantage. I was "the wise old man" with all the answers from the dim past. But then about 4 years ago things started to change. My biggest client hired a new marketing director who was about 35. She decided to put the account "out for bid". Being an old friend of the President, I, of course, was offered a chance to make a pitch. I worked for two weeks and made my pitch to two vice presidents and the president. The president was my age (or older) and stated at the outset that he was going to let his two (much younger) vice presidents make the decision.
I was not there for the competing presentation, of course, but I had inside information about them. They were young (30's). They had piercings and spiked hair. They had 3 or 4 employees, so their presentation was more elaborate than mine (though not as focused or useful, since I had been the company's agency for almost 20 years and knew their company and their customers intimately).
Well, the two vice presidents (one 35 and one 45) decided that the company needed "young ideas" and I lost 40% of my income in one day. My son, who I had helped get a job with this company several years earlier, eventually rose in the ranks and made sure that I was thrown some "crumbs" of business, which continues to this day and for which, I am grateful, but it is literally less than 10% of the business I used to get from them.
Then it started happening at other clients. Partly the recession and partly age. I was being out-bid on website jobs by people 30 and 40 years younger than me who were still living with Mom and Dad. Advertising budgets at smaller companies were cut and what advertising they did was being done "by relatives" or "in house" or "overseas". All this only 3 years before I planned to "hang it up" and retire happily.
Between the losses I suffered in my (meager) retirement account during the "downturn" and what I had to take out to keep paying the rent and my suppliers, my retirement now consists entirely of what I will inherit when my Mother passes (she is 85). Now looking forward, I see a turd wrapped in bacon, which is not very appetizing, but it's all I have.
I have, so far, managed to keep the wolf from the door (barely) and hung onto my house and my vacation condo (which I rent to pay the mortgage and fees) which we bought 10 years ago so that my wife could soothe her psoriatic arthritis twice a year in the saltwater and sunshine. In fact, I still have next week available for any Kossack who can get away this Saturday and go to the Gulf Coast - I'll give you a great deal if you identify yourself as such...
I write this not for sympathy, but to assure others in my situation (and I know there are lots of them) that they are not alone and it is not their fault. I used to be solidly middle class and I now qualify for food stamps (and a lovely subsidy on my health insurance), but this is not what I worked for all these years. I blame (in order), Wall Street greed, Private Equity buy-out firms, George W. Bush, Republicans in general, and greedy banks.