An estimated one half of seniors has not put aside enough money for their retirement years. In most cases, that means these seniors will have to keep working long after retirement age, at least part-time, in order to make ends meet and save enough money for today’s extended lifespans. The good news, however, is the Internet has led to increased opportunities to work from home, and people of all ages can take advantage of remote work opportunities to supplement their incomes, including seniors. The best jobs for seniors who wish to work from home include medical billing, bookkeeping, customer service representative, tax preparation and transcription work. If you're a senior considering a work-from-home job opportunity, check out the following questions and answers to learn more about your options.
Some of these jobs allow you to work directly with companies that provide these services to their customers, and they will handle the details of income reporting and tax withholding. Other jobs are handled in on a subcontractor basis, which means you will have to keep track of how much money you make and how much you will have to send to the government. If you are receiving Social Security payments, you may not be required to pay taxes on this income. You may wish to discuss the matter with an accountant to determine your requirements.
Many individuals offer medical billing as a service to doctors and other medical providers. As an independent small business, you will have to do your own marketing to these providers, keep records of your income and ensure you are in compliance with other business requirements. Tax preparation can also be done as a small business. Bookkeeping and transcribing can also be done as an independent business.
Tax preparation and medical billing require the most training among the top work-at-home jobs. Tax preparation requires a good understanding of current tax laws. Unless you are trained as an accountant, you will be required to undergo a training program to provide the basic knowledge of tax forms, deductions and other matters. Medical billing uses a specialized code that can be difficult to understand unless you have some training or experience in the medical terms.
All of these jobs require a computer with sufficient specs to allow you to handle required software, as well as an Internet connection with enough speed to handle tasks quickly and easily. You will also need the software to send and receive documents and accounting software to allow you to enter bookkeeping. For transcription, you will need the ability to start and stop the vocal recording, as you process the information into document form.
The company you work for may provide specific training in customer service for their needs. If you have some experience as a customer service representative in the past, you should be able to pick up the needed information relatively quickly and will be able to get started immediately on helping customers with their questions and needs.
Some of these jobs will allow you to work on your own schedule. Other jobs, such as customer service representative and medical billing are likely to have assigned times of the day and days of the week that you will have to be available. However, some of these tasks may allow flexible scheduling, depending on the company offering the work.
Your work as a customer service representative will require frequent contact with customers, who will expect immediate help with problems or questions. An ability to maintain a calm and friendly attitude is critical, as not all customers will have a positive attitude. Tax preparation will also require significant amounts of interpersonal contact, and will require some sensitivity to working with individual’s personal financial information.
Pay rates vary widely from region to region, and from company to company. Generally, medical billers, bookkeepers and transcribers will receive more than tax preparers and customer service representatives. However, as you gain experience in specialized areas, you are more likely to receive top pay for your work.