Teacher Builds Better Balance for Fun in Retirement

Many people think of retirement as a period in life full of baking cookies, swinging on the porch, and golfing. But for many retirees, that routine might sound like a nice vacation for a little while but becomes tedious on a daily basis.

Karen J. was one of those retirees. She didn't want to settle quietly into her hobbies after she retired from teaching. The desire to fill up some of her time and satisfy her quest for continual learning took her back to the classroom part-time.

However, it didn't take long for her to realize a traditional teaching role in a classroom was no longer an ideal fit for her retirement years. "Being inside the school working with a very limited and tight schedule, I decided I wanted more flexibility," Karen says.

Seeking a Better Work-Life Balance in Retirement

Karen also needed a job that provided more consistent income to add to her savings and boost her hobby fund. "Not getting a salary when schools are closed, on holidays, during vacation weeks, or over the entire summer was a bit stressful!"

But Karen found that it was challenging to find a part-time job that matched her professional skills and experience on her own, which led her to FlexJobs.

Discovering New Options

Through FlexJobs, Karen was able to land not one but two part-time, flexible positions with TutorMe and Littera Education. And together, they fit her needs perfectly. Now, Karen is busy "enjoying more of life by having time for other pursuits, piano, crafts, church activities, or simply being with friends."

"I enjoy being at home because it is quiet. I can take breaks when needed, schedule work, and not feel rushed to get from one place to another by a certain time. Now, I can leave for appointments or just have additional time for my hobbies."

Beyond balancing her time, Karen enjoys staying relevant and learning new skills that align with her lifelong career. "These roles give me additional training since I am a lifelong learner and still would like to help students achieve success."

Advice to Anyone Considering a FlexJobs Membership

Like many retirees, Karen noted that it's a balancing act to fight against age bias and other stereotypes about retirees. She suggests that other retirees update their resumes strategically with a focus on communicating both their experience and desire to keep working.

And even though budgets can be tight in retirement, Karen thinks the paid membership is well worth it. She says, "Try it for three months and keep looking! FlexJobs has a LOT of jobs."

Create Your Own Retirement Rules

There is no standard blueprint for retirement anymore. As Karen discovered, you can create your work-life balance rules.

If you're ready to explore your flexible work options, FlexJobs can help. We post jobs daily in over 50 career categories, and we have an entire team of real people dedicated to verifying those jobs to ensure that our members only see legitimate opportunities. Take the tour and discover all of the ways FlexJobs can support you!

Balance and a Rewarding Career Using FlexJobs

For many, the United States Census Bureau study about commuting comes as no surprise. The Bureau's report shares that the average time spent commuting back and forth to work has grown to almost 30 minutes each way. And for most professionals who work in an office setting, giving up five hours of life each week for a commute is pretty standard.

But Sara S. struggled with a lengthy commute combined with long, draining hours. She realized that something had to change. Her work life was taking a toll on her family and personal commitments and pushing her to professional burnout. It was time to take back control of her life.

Committing to Pursuing Balance

Recognizing that she needed a change, Sara looked for remote roles independently. It was only a short time before she realized she was spending more time sourcing legitimate positions than she was applying for and following up on them.

"I had been looking for a remote position for a few months and wasted so much time and energy on fake job leads." Even with the many awareness campaigns, job seekers like Sara are often overwhelmed with the number of scams targeting job seekers. Fortunately, she found FlexJobs, and her job search became streamlined and productive.

Building a Rewarding Career

Sara knew that her next role needed to do more than create balance. She was also determined that it would be a quality position aligned with her career goals. "I didn't want to step backward in my career or be stuck in a position with no growth opportunities."

Fortunately, Sara remained focused on her goals and found a perfect fit in a fully remote role with UnitedHealth Group. Now, Sara can be more present for her family without having to put her career to the side. "I found an organization I can grow with, professionally and personally."

Thriving Throughout All Areas

If you ask Sara how working remotely has affected her life, she'll tell you she's enjoying building better balance in the larger, more apparent areas of her life. "I have more time for the things that are important to me—my kids, my education goals, and my health," she says.

But like most professionals new to remote work, Sara discovered that work flexibility has also enhanced her life in other areas. "I am saving on gas and auto expenses, eating healthier, and I can wear activewear to work, so I go for a jog or do Pilates on my breaks!"

Advocating for Work Flexibility

Now that Sara is thriving in a meaningful role supporting her work-life balance, she has become an advocate for others to make effective changes in their lives. "I have recommended FlexJobs to so many people. It was well worth purchasing the membership."

Her guidance to others looking for more work freedom? Your job search is much more than tailoring a resume and hitting "submit." Sara says, "Don't forget about the value of networking," also stating that, "A flawless resume is useless if no one ever reads it."

Create Your Own Success Story

We hear from job seekers like Sara every day, sharing the enormous impact that flexible work has made on their lives.

If you're ready to build a better work-life balance, take the tour and discover all of the resources that FlexJobs offers to support you in your job search.

Make sure your theme is mobile-friendly

 After making sure that your site is fast, make sure your website, or your theme, is mobile-friendly. Making your website mobile-friendly starts with ensuring the links are not too close together and buttons are easily clickable. Your font should be consistent and not too small, and your images are not too big, both in file size and dimensions.

We’d like to highlight two specific mobile theme optimizations below.

6.1.1. Use a responsive design

In 2022, having a responsive design is a no-brainer. Responsive design means that the design of your website adapts to the screen size your visitor is using. You can do this by using specific CSS media queries. You have to address particular ranges of screen widths and plan for those. Most WordPress themes are now responsive.

Depending on the part of the world you are targeting, no, how fast their mobile internet is, you might want to change a couple of things. Think about how you use images on your site. Are you using any text enhancements or font variations that might hinder the excellent performance of the mobile website? Responsive design helps you build a more focused website. That brings us to the second optimization.

6.1.2. Prioritize what’s important to mobile users

Take a step back and look at your website: what do your users want to do here? Define the four to six main tasks your user performs on your website and focus on these. Maybe even give the most crucial task a big fat call-to-action button.

Here’s an example: If you have a local business, the two main tasks might be calling you or finding the directions to your business. That means you could add these as a unique mobile menu, for instance, some visible all the time. Focus on your visitor’s main tasks and make their life as easy as possible. How to find these top tasks? Ask your visitors! Also, check Google Analytics for the most visited pages on your mobile website. More about Analytics further down this article.

7. Analyze and improve your performance

A good SEO campaign relies not only on implementing changes but also on measuring the impact of those changes, seeing what works, and doing more of that. Google has developed two unique tools to analyze your website’s results and identify new opportunities that you could focus on in the future.

The first one for analyzing results is Google Analytics. Adding Google Analytics to your website ensures all user data will be stored in your account. You can, for instance, check how many visits your pages get, how many of your visitors convert, how many visitors immediately leave your website after landing on a specific page, and much more. Within Google Analytics, you can see how visitors behave on your website. Here’s how to track your SEO with Google Analytics.

The second tool analyzes how your website performs and how visitors find you in the search engine. That tool is Google Search Console. Exporting and sorting through your search queries and impression data makes it easy to identify opportunities where you could focus on improving clickthrough rates, content, and/or rankings.

Use monitoring and logging

 Security is an ongoing process. You must keep a keen eye on any breaches and keep your website as secure as possible. You could put part of your WordPress security in the hands of, for instance, a company like Sucuri. In case of a hack, they’ll fix this asap. You could check your site regularly with their Sitecheck tool for your monitoring. Some plugins can help you secure your WordPress site by, for instance, monitoring files on your server, like WordFence, iThemes, or Sucuri. Pick your plugin of choice as long as you make sure that security is monitored.

It can also be helpful to keep track of everything happening on your websites, like file changes and logged-in users. Several plugins and tools exist, like WP Security Audit Log. Keeping track of these things makes sure that you can find irregularities in your installation and act on these or find what happened when in case of a security issue.

6. Cater to your mobile visitors

Take one look around, and you’ll notice that our mobile devices are becoming the de facto way of browsing the web, even when we’re lying on our couch at home. But we don’t visit mobile websites — we visit websites. See your mobile and desktop site as one entity. You, as a website owner, need to cater to your visitors.

Some years ago, the mobile market share surpassed the desktop market share. If you are only optimizing for desktop visitors, you are not optimizing for most of your visitors. Of course, it depends on your specific niche since those numbers could be different. Google Analytics can give you the exact numbers for your site.

With a market share like this, there is no way you can consider your mobile website an ‘extra’. It’s time for mobile SEO.

Secure your WordPress website

 WordPress is the most-used platform for website management in the world. It powers almost 42% of the web (June 2021). While that is awesome, it also means that WordPress is the most targeted platform for hackers. When running a WordPress website, basic security is dealt with by the CMS, but there are things you can do yourselves to make your website more secure.

That starts with your login. The default username in WordPress is admin, so change that first. Otherwise, a hacker’s first guess for your username is too easy. The same goes for your password. Passwords like 123456 and welcome01 are just not enough. Use a password manager like 1Password or LastPass and pick a 20+ character password instead. WordPress also has several plugins for two-factor verification, so adding that to your website is easy as pie as well. Please do it.

Of course, there is more you can do; please read our article detailing WordPress security in a few easy steps. We’ll highlight some of the recommendations below.

5.1. Make regular backups

The next thing we’d like you to do is create regular backups. If your site gets hacked or something else goes wrong — for instance, when updating a plugin or theme —you must revert that change in a heartbeat. Regular backups make sure that this can be done.

In WordPress, there is a wide range of backup options to choose from. Several plugin developers have created excellent software solutions for you, so you don’t have the technical hassle of that backup.

5.2. Harden your setup

Hardening your setup starts with picking the right hosting company for your WordPress website. That’s just the start, as every host will do its best to help you out, but it’ll still be your responsibility to harden your setup. Also, tools like Cloudflare are good friends for any company/website.

An easy first step is to limit login attempts. By limiting the number of times, people can try to log in to your website — closing your login form after five false logins, for example — you are hardening your installation against brute force attacks and other malicious acts targeting that form.

The next thing you need to do is ensure that your WordPress install, including plugins and themes, is always up-to-date. Updates might fix security issues as well. Make sure to check for updates and keep your WordPress installation up-to-date regularly.

Another essential thing to realize is that you deal with security whenever you add a new user or writer to your WordPress install. There’s an article in the WordPress Codex regarding Roles and Capabilities you should read. It comes down to giving permissions only to those who need it when needed and only for the time they need it. There is no need to provide a guest blogger administrative rights to your website, right?

Authentication Keys and Salts work in conjunction to protect your cookies and passwords in transit between the browser and web server. Make sure to change these keys when installing a new WordPress instance.

Another easy fix we’d like to mention is ensuring your template files can’t be edited from the WordPress backend. You can do this in Appearance → Editor. When a hacker gets past your login form, this is the easiest way to add malicious code to your website. Hardening this involves changing your wp-config file.