I'm 82 and earn $16 an hour working at a boat store. I don't have much saved and can't retire, but everything will work out.

"My first job was teaching elementary school music. I also did volunteer work at a local youth development center, and ended up teaching at a junior high school where I stayed until 1973. I got married the year after, and my work became homeschooling my kids and doing some side help with my husband in his dental practice. I didn't go back into the workforce until the late 1990s, when I started doing some substitute teaching."

"By that point, my mother, who was 92, was living with us, and my oldest biological son was married. Son two and three were in college, and I had a daughter who was in seventh grade. I needed to do something and be close to home, but trying to get a local job in music was not easy. I decided that if I went into guidance counseling, I could probably stay closer to the area and have more options."

Patricia Wheatley, 82, works at a friend's boat store for $16 an hour to supplement Social Security and to buy gifts for grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She has limited savings and balances work with caregiving and family responsibilities. Her early career was as an elementary school music teacher and junior high teacher until 1973, followed by homeschooling and assisting in her husband's dental practice. She returned to paid work in the late 1990s as a substitute teacher. After her husband died in 2000 and with an elderly mother and school-age children at home, she earned a master's in guidance counseling at 57 to find local employment.

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