How We Survived an Income Shock in Our Fifties

Losing your job towards the end of your career can be terrifying, but for some it’s a huge opportunity. We meet the workers who changed tack and never looked back.

When Sally Wilse was made redundant from the software company she had helped to set up a decade earlier, it came as a huge shock. Overnight she went from earning just under £100,000 a year to being without a job. She was 50.

“It hurt and it was very scary, and it took a long time to come to terms with,” said Wilse, now 63, from Canterbury. Her husband Christian, 67, had been made redundant two years before her.

After deciding that she did not want another corporate job that could leave her vulnerable again, Wilse looked at starting up her own firm. She had seen an advert on a flight for the US company Seniors Helping Seniors, which provides older carers for the elderly, contacted the company and eventually bought a franchise.

The couple sold their £700,000 home and Christian cashed in his pension, ploughing the proceeds into the new business. “We sat our adult children down and told them what we would like to do, and they gave us their blessing to sell their home,” she said.

Their Canterbury Seniors Helping Seniors franchise now has a turnover of just under £1 million and has helped to spawn another nine franchises across the UK.