Why Volunteering in Retirement Is One of the Best Things You Can Do

Another Iran deal rumour, another set of records – and the highest PCE inflation in three years arrived quietly alongside them.

The quick scan: Thursday delivered more records despite a genuinely conflicted backdrop. An Axios report that the US and Iran had reached a final deal – conditional on Trump's approval – sent oil lower and markets surging intraday. By the close, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ had notched fresh all-time highs while the Dow barely moved. Then the PCE inflation data landed: 3.8% year-on-year, the highest reading since 2023. Markets absorbed it and kept climbing.

S&P 500: +0.58%, 7,563.63 – A record close; tech led, with AI software names Microsoft, Oracle and Palantir each gaining between 3% and 4%
Dow Jones: +0.05%, 50,668.97 – Essentially flat; Salesforce fell 2% after earnings, 3M dropped 2%, Caterpillar slipped. IBM (+2.99%), Chevron and Microsoft provided offset
NASDAQ: +0.91%, 26,917.47 – A record close; Snowflake's strong earnings outlook reignited AI infrastructure enthusiasm and pulled the broader tech complex higher.

What's driving it: Two things happened simultaneously on Thursday that should, in theory, pull markets in opposite directions. The Iran deal report – later described by sources as a 60-day memorandum to extend the ceasefire and gradually restore Persian Gulf energy exports – sent oil lower and equities higher. Simultaneously, PCE inflation came in at 3.8% annually, the highest since mid-2023, with core PCE at 3.3%. That's a number that argues for tighter policy, not looser. Markets chose to focus on the Iran signal. Dell Technologies added to the constructive mood, reporting 88% year-on-year revenue growth and a $9.7 billion Pentagon software deal, with data centre and server revenue up 181%.

Bottom line: A market that can post record closes on the same day it receives a three-year inflation high is telling you something about where investor attention is anchored right now – and it's anchored on the Iran resolution, not the inflation data. For L-Plate Retirees, the practical read is that both matter. If the ceasefire holds and energy exports resume, inflation comes down and the rate environment improves. That's the scenario markets are pricing. The PCE number is the reminder that it hasn't happened yet.

The Retirement Activity That's Better for You Than Almost Anything Else

The scoop: More than 25 million Americans aged 50 to 70 are eager to share their skills, passions and expertise by volunteering to address social needs. Of those, 4.5 million are already doing it in encore careers. Another 21 million are preparing to make the move.

That is not a fringe trend. It is a generation reaching the end of formal working life and deciding, in significant numbers, that the answer to "what now?" involves doing something useful for someone else. Whatever the motivation, the research on what volunteering does for retirees is worth taking seriously.

What the research actually shows

Volunteering after retirement isn't just altruistic. It offers measurable health advantages that are difficult to replicate through leisure alone.

Studies consistently show that retirees who volunteer experience reduced risks of depression, improved cognitive function, and increased longevity. The social connection dimension is particularly significant – retirement can strip away the daily human contact that most people didn't realise they were dependent on until it disappeared. Volunteering reintroduces that contact in a structured, purposeful form.

And then there is the happiness dimension. Retirement without structure or purpose can feel surprisingly aimless – even for people who spent years looking forward to it. Volunteering reintroduces meaning in a specific way: you are needed, your contributions matter, and your time is making someone else's life measurably better. That combination is associated with higher happiness and longer life expectancy in the research literature.

More than half of Americans (55%) agree that putting skills and expertise to use helping others is an important part of how they view the post-career stage of life. And 28% put volunteering at the centre of their retirement planning. Purposeful engagement in retirement is increasingly understood to be a health intervention, not merely a nice thing to do.

The encore career question

One of the more interesting aspects of the Boldin research is the concept of encore careers – roles in the nonprofit world that are paid, at least partially, but defined more by purpose than by income.

Popular fields for people over 50 include finance, marketing, fundraising, event planning and public relations. The reframing that matters here comes from Kerry Hannon, AARP's jobs expert: "You're not reinventing yourself in a second career in the nonprofit world; you're re-deploying." The skills exist. The experience exists. The question is where to redirect them.

Among those already in encore careers, 44% transitioned between ages 45 and 54, and another 44% between 55 and 64. The window is wide.

The planning question

One finding from the research stands out as directly applicable to anyone considering this path: the people who are most successful at making career transitions start three to four years ahead of time.

That timeline is earlier than most people act on. The instinct is to wait until retirement is imminent, then look around for something meaningful to do. What the evidence suggests instead is that the groundwork – understanding what's available, what skills translate, what the financial implications are – is best laid while still employed.

This means volunteering on weekends or evenings before retirement. It means updating a LinkedIn profile to include volunteer experience, causes, and community involvement. It means finding out whether local universities offer programmes specifically designed to help people transition from corporate to nonprofit roles.

And it means getting the finances stable enough that the decision about what to do with your time is genuinely free rather than constrained by an income gap you didn't plan for. Among those who have made the transition to encore careers, two thirds experienced income gaps. Of those, four in five say the gap lasted six months or more, with more than a third saying it lasted over two years. Most relied on personal savings alone.

The financial preparation isn't a footnote. It's what makes the rest possible.

The OzHarvest thread

This is the second time in two weeks this newsletter has circled back to volunteering. Last weekend's Musing described an afternoon at OzHarvest – a food rescue morning that produced 50 kilograms of rescued food and an unexpected insight about a colleague's father who drives the truck three times a week because it gives his retirement days a shape and a reason.

The Boldin research is the structural context for that story. The man with the truck is one of 25 million. His three-times-a-week commitment is the kind of purposeful, consistent engagement that the research associates with reduced depression, better cognitive function, and longer life. He didn't design it as a health intervention. He just found something that needed doing and showed up.

That's usually how it starts.

Where to begin

For anyone who has been thinking about this but hasn't acted, the barrier is almost never principle – it's logistics. Where do you find the right opportunity? How do you translate decades of professional experience into a nonprofit context? What do the finances need to look like first?

The Boldin article identifies several platforms worth knowing. VolunteerMatch connects people with organisations locally and nationally. Senior Corps specifically serves Americans 55 and older through tutoring, elderly care, and disaster relief programmes. The National Park Service's Volunteers-In-Parks programme ranges from one-off events to sustained positions. The Peace Corps actively recruits older volunteers, noting that experience is an asset rather than a liability. Create the Good, an AARP partner, uses a quick questionnaire to match people with opportunities. Global Volunteers works internationally through partnerships with the UN and UNICEF.

For those interested in encore careers specifically, updating a LinkedIn profile with volunteer experience is a meaningful starting point. More than 40% of LinkedIn hiring managers consider volunteer work equally valuable to paid experience, and 20% have hired someone specifically because of their volunteer record.

The question is when to start. The answer the evidence keeps giving is: earlier than you're planning to.

Actionable Takeaways for L-Plate Retirees:

• Take the health benefits seriously, not just the feel-good ones. Volunteering is associated with reduced depression, improved cognitive function, and increased longevity. This isn't anecdote – it's a consistent pattern across the research literature. If you're building a retirement plan that accounts for health, volunteering belongs in it.

• Start volunteering before you retire, not after. The most successful transitions begin three to four years before the formal exit from work. Use weekends or evenings to test organisations, build relationships, and accumulate experience that will be relevant when the time comes. Don't wait for retirement to figure out what purposeful engagement looks like.

• Think of your skills as re-deployable, not retired. Finance, marketing, operations, communications, event management – these are skills that the nonprofit sector consistently needs and often lacks. You are not starting over. You are redirecting. That reframe changes how the transition feels and how you market yourself into it.

• Sort out the LinkedIn profile. Include your volunteer work, causes you care about, and the community organisations you've been involved in. Over 40% of hiring managers treat volunteer experience as equivalent to paid experience. If you're considering an encore career, this is not optional.

• Plan for an income gap if you're moving into nonprofit work. Two thirds of people who make the transition experience a period with significantly reduced income. The average gap lasts more than six months. Build that buffer into your retirement financial plan before it becomes a constraint on your choices.

• Find an opportunity that fits naturally, not one that feels virtuous. Arnold's lesson from yesterday applies here too: the activities that last are the ones you genuinely like. The man with the OzHarvest truck isn't white-knuckling through a sense of obligation. He likes it. Find the version of that for yourself.

Your Turn:
Has the idea of volunteering or an encore career been on your radar for retirement, or has it mostly lived in the category of "things I might do eventually" without much specific shape to it?
The research suggests starting three to four years before retirement produces the best outcomes. Where are you in relation to that timeline – and if you're behind it, what's the most realistic first step?
If you could deploy one skill or area of expertise from your working life into a community that genuinely needed it, what would that be – and is there an organisation you already know of that could use it?

👉 Hit reply and share your thoughts – your answers could inspire fellow readers in future issues.

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