I applied for unemployment insurance (UI) about a week after losing my job. My position (there were three of us) was taken “in-house,” I was told, so I am eligible for UI since I was let go through no fault of my own.

Let me say that navigating the ins and outs of UI is not so easy, but I was able to apply, include all the pertinent information (including adding up all earned income over the past 18 months), and, today, uploaded a resume to the linked job board. (When filling out government forms, I always feel for the people for whom English may not be their first language or those with a limited education.) I will diligently look for work, but nothing looks promising so far. I constantly checked the job boards even when I was working, but couldn’t find anything in recent months that even came close to a job like the one I had had.

I have been watching YouTube videos of people who have recently lost their jobs, and those are not encouraging either. This is especially true for the people posting and commenting who are in their 50s and 60s. Of the couple jobs I’ve applied for, one firm has not responded, and the other rejected me in one day. These jobs were not perfect matches, so it’s understandable.

I know of people my age being out of work for over a year. No matter what anyone says, age discrimination is real in the job market. Of course, we are not asked for our age or date of birth, but subtracting a college graduation in the mid-1980s from the year 2025, for example, is pretty simple math.

If no job comes through in a reasonable amount of time, I will contemplate retiring. But with a meager SS payment coming my way and not a whole lot stashed away in retirement savings, my retirement income will not be what I am hoping for. Still, we need to pull the plug at some point.

The husband of a friend of mine has come down with a form of dementia. He’s 74 and was a medical professional. He was active and physically fit. He had retired back when he turned 60, and although that seemed young at the time, what an advantage that proved to be for him. Had he waited to retire until 66, 67, or 70, he would have had only a few symptom-free years instead of the 10 or so “good” years he’s had.

My best friend, who is exactly my age, has been retired for 3.5 years. She was a public employee who, fortunately, has a pension and will also be eligible for SS benefits. For her, the stress her work brought her and the fact that she had a decent pension made the choice easy.

So, it’s food for thought. No one knows what the future will hold; when to retire is a gamble: Do we hold out for a few more years of income until retirement and then more accumulated retirement benefits, or do we start Social Security early, taking in less per month but having more free time and getting our benefits sooner? It depends on what we think our lifespan will be and our other sources of income.

It’s a crap shoot for sure.