As befits a career in investment banking, Jonathan Francis takes a precise view of his life’s phases. At 67 he is, he says, embarking on Act Three. He defines Act One as babyhood, infancy and education; Act Two, as career and family. Now, he has quit finance not for a life on the golf course but to start a new business valuing handcrafted furniture.
Two years into his new working life, the trained economist based in Boston, Massachusetts no longer spends his days evaluating the market price of stocks and bonds but rather chairs and tables.
Mr Francis is one of a number of people in their 60s who continue to work beyond the traditional retirement age – by choice or necessity – and embark on a second career, sometimes labelled an “encore career”.