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K. Esther Szabo was a small child when the recession of the early 1970s sent her family’s fortunes into a tailspin. Her father, an economist, struggled to find work, and her mother worried about paying the bills. The family eventually filed bankruptcy.

The tensions at home put a permanent mark on Ms. Szabo. To help her family, she started working at age 8, doing chores for neighbors, and has been working ever since. When a personal-finance class in college introduced her to the idea that calamities like the one that crippled her family could be avoided with careful planning, she found the idea “mind-blowing,” she says. She now co-owns a Los Altos, Calif., financial-planning firm.

In this current recession, we may be creating a new generation of Ms. Szabos. Economic downturns leave enduring marks on the career prospects and aspirations of children. Some youngsters will face lasting setbacks, while others will emerge more focused and motivated, based on studies of past recessions. The outcome depends partly on a child’s age, on the example set by parents, and on whether young people can be empowered somehow to help their families through the crisis.

College students may be among the hardest-hit. Graduates who entered the job market in the recession of the early 1980s made significantly less money for at least a decade, compared with those who graduated in more prosperous times, says a study by Yale University’s Lisa Kahn. Another study, a 21-year look at 39,000 father-son pairs published last year in the Journal of Labor Economics, found sons whose fathers were laid off had annual earnings 9% lower than comparable youths whose fathers kept their jobs. Recession-era grads also tended to remain stuck in lower-prestige jobs, even after the economy recovered, Dr. Kahn found. While the reasons aren’t clear, some may have invested too much in their original jobs to try to move to a more prestigious job and start anew when the economy picked up. Others may have felt loyalty to the employers that harbored them in hard times.

Small children, too, are vulnerable psychologically in ways that shape their aspirations. Glen Elder, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, found in studies of the Great Depression that the self-image of small children of that era was shaped by the morale of their same-sex parent. Amid the traditional gender roles of the time, young boys suffered most, from seeing their fathers deprived of work and a sense of identity, says Dr. Elder, author of “Children of the Great Depression.” Because preschoolers and pre-teens were too young to understand the causes or to help out financially, they risked growing up with “a lack of initiative, of confidence, of self-efficacy,” he says.

Those who fared best, Dr. Elder says, were teenagers when the downturn hit — young enough to avoid the worst blows, but old enough to work for pay. “They were in an opportune time … to pick up some of the lessons of the period,” he says. Depression-era hardships also led youths from hard-hit families to grow up faster; many committed to a vocation shortly after high school, earlier than offspring of more prosperous families.

Past isn’t necessarily prologue, of course. Also, applying the lessons of the past will be hard; kids today who try to find work face tall hurdles, with teen employment hitting new lows, says Andrew Sum, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies.

Nevertheless, parents are already finding lessons in the current troubles. Based on a study of 77 white-collar layoff victims published last year in the journal Social Forces, jobless parents are urging children to equip themselves to survive hard times, by developing transferable skills or learning to be entrepreneurs.

With luck, many youngsters will take the cue. “It’s a joy for me,” says Ms. Szabo, the financial planner, “when I help people see they don’t have to be a victim” of a bad economy. A big reward, she adds, is seeing anxious customers leave her office with renewed confidence in their plans for the future.

HARTFORD, Conn. – A 200-pound domesticated chimpanzee who once starred in TV commercials for Old Navy and Coca-Cola was shot dead by police after a violent rampage that left a friend of its owner badly mauled.

Sandra Herold, who owned the 15-year-old chimp named Travis, wrestled with the animal, stabbed it and hit it with a shovel after it inexplicably attacked her friend Charla Nash, 55.

Nash had gone to Herold’s home in Stamford on Monday to help her coax the chimp back into the house after he got out, police said. After the animal lunged at Nash when she got out of her car, Herold ran inside to call 911 and returned armed.

“She retrieved a large butcher knife and stabbed her longtime pet numerous times in an effort to save her friend, who was really being brutally attacked,” said Stamford police Capt. Richard Conklin. Herold told police that the knife had no effect, and that she also struck Travis with a shovel.

Nash was in critical condition Tuesday after suffering what Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy called “life-changing, if not life-threatening,” injuries to her face and hands.

Her sister-in-law, Kate Nash, said Tuesday morning that Nash underwent surgery Monday night and came out of it “OK.”

Herold and two officers also received minor injuries, police said. Conklin said police don’t know what triggered the attack.

“There was no provocation that we know of. One thing that we’re looking into is that we understand the chimpanzee has Lyme disease and has been ill from that, so maybe from the medications he was out of sorts. We really don’t know,” Conklin said.

Colleen McCann, a primatologist at the Bronx Zoo, said Tuesday that chimpanzees are unpredictable and dangerous even after living among humans for years.

“It’s deceiving to think that if any animal is … well-behaved around humans, that means there is no risk involved to humans for potential outbursts of behavior,” she said. “They are unpredictable, and in instances like this you cannot control that behavior or prevent it from happening if it is in a private home.”

After the initial attack, Travis ran away and started roaming Herold’s property until police arrived, setting up security so medics could reach the critically injured woman, Conklin said.

But the chimpanzee returned and went after several of the officers, who retreated into their cars, Conklin said. An officer shot Travis several times after the animal opened the door to his cruiser and started to get in.

“The animal had cornered him,” Conklin said Tuesday. “He had no other recourse.”  The wounded chimpanzee fled into the house and retreated to his living quarters, where he died.

A woman answering the door at Herold’s house Tuesday morning declined to comment.

Conklin told reporters the chimp was acting so agitated earlier that afternoon that Herold gave him the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in some tea. Conklin also suggested the animal may have attacked Nash because she was wearing her hair differently and perhaps wasn’t recognized.

The chimpanzee was well-known around Stamford because he rode around in trucks belonging to the towing company operated by his owners.

Police have dealt with him in the past, including an incident in 2003 when he escaped from his owners’ vehicle in downtown Stamford for two hours. Officers used cookies, macadamia treats and ice cream in an attempt to lure him, but subdued him only after he became too tired to resist.

At the time of the 2003 incident, police said the Herolds told them the chimpanzee was toilet trained, dressed himself, took his own bath, ate at the table and drank wine from a stemmed glass. He also brushed his teeth using a Water Pik, logged onto the computer to look at pictures, and watched television using the remote control, police said.

When he was younger, Travis appeared on TV commercials for Old Navy and Coca-Cola, made an appearance on the “Maury Povich Show” and took part in a television pilot, according to a 2003 story in The Advocate newspaper of Stamford.

“He’s been raised almost like a child by this family,” Conklin said Monday. “He rides in a car every day, he opens doors, he’s a very unique animal in that aspect. We have no indication of what provoked this behavior at all.”

A new tax law contains some good news for those who stand to inherit 401(k) accounts from someone besides a spouse.

As part of a recovery package enacted in December, Congress has given other heirs of qualified plans the same favorable tax treatment previously reserved for spouses — specifically, the ability to defer taxes on the money by rolling it over into an individual retirement account.

“It’s a pretty significant change,” says Blanche Lark Christerson, managing director at Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management. “When it comes to how your 401(k) is treated at your death, there’s no longer a downside to keeping your money in one of these plans after retirement.”

Children, siblings, domestic partners and other “nonspouse” beneficiaries of these accounts have long been subject to rules requiring them to cash out 401(k) inheritances within one to five years of the account owner’s death. At that point, the heir would owe income tax on the entire amount, since taxes had been deferred.

In 2006, Congress enacted a law that was supposed to put all beneficiaries on an equal footing, since spouses have always been free to transfer inherited 401(k) money to an IRA.

The advantage: Once the money is in an IRA, beneficiaries can stretch the withdrawals — and the tax bills — over their own life expectancies, rather than having to cash out the account.

But under a 2007 ruling, the Internal Revenue Service gave employers the right to choose whether to amend their 401(k) plans to allow for these transfers.

“Clearly, not all 401(k) plans did so, or Congress would never have enacted this new law,” says Ms. Christerson. According to Ms. Christerson, the new law applies to 401(k)s, 403(b)s and other defined-contribution-style retirement savings plans.

There are still good reasons for 401(k) account owners to consider an IRA rollover upon retiring or leaving a company, even with the new law.

For one thing, with an IRA, they’ll be able to choose from a broader array of investments options.

Moreover, 401(k) plans have until Jan. 1, 2010, to comply with the new law; thus, anyone who leaves a company this year — or who still has a 401(k) account with a previous employer — should ask the plan administrator whether nonspouse beneficiaries are permitted to roll the money over to an IRA.

To take advantage of the new law, beneficiaries must meet certain deadlines.

According to Ms. Christerson, they have to transfer their inheritances to an IRA — and take a first distribution — by the last day of the year after the year in which the account owner dies.

For example, the heir of someone who dies in 2010 would have to complete both the transfer and the first distribution by Dec. 31, 2011.

With their finances in shambles, many in the 60-plus crowd are looking for jobs. Here’s how some are finding work — and adjusting to new lives.

The advice in recent months — from financial planners, economists and educators — has been unvarying: Retirees whose nest eggs have cracked wide open should go out and find a job.

Easier said than done.

Across the country, retirees who never imagined themselves returning to the workplace are polishing résumés and knocking on employers’ doors. The problem: Most are running smack into the worst job market in almost three decades. Nearly 5% of workers age 55 and older were unemployed in December, a 58% jump from a year earlier and the highest percentage since 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Of course, the idea of “working in retirement” isn’t new. In the past decade, many older Americans have started businesses or sought out part-time employment — sometimes to help with household budgets, but frequently to follow long-deferred dreams. Today, though, with retirement savings in shambles and the economy in turmoil, job searches have taken on a new sense of urgency — and, in some cases, desperation.

“That’s all people talk about…[that] they have to go back to work,” says Dan Sweeney, 62 years old, a former court officer who lives in the Villages, a large retirement community in central Florida. Mr. Sweeney has been working part time as a ranger at a local golf course, where he drives around in a cart making sure the pace of play is what it should be, handing out water and generally helping golfers. Last month, he started doing direct-marketing work at home, too, but he’s also looking for a job with better pay.

Meanwhile, a neighbor — who had invested his nest egg with Bernard L. Madoff, the New York financier accused of running a giant Ponzi scheme — is trying to land work similar to Mr. Sweeney’s. “He lost his life savings, and he was applying for [a] little golf-course job,” Mr. Sweeney says.

Despite sizable hurdles, some retirees are finding work. How did they land those jobs, the first that some had applied for in several decades? What are the best and worst parts of their newfound employment? We spoke with dozens of older adults who had retired — but who returned to work during the past year as the recession deepened. Here are several of their stories:

Getting Over ‘the Sulk’

Terry McNally, 65, was a manufacturers’ representative in the stainless-steel industry in Northville, Mich., until three years ago, then worked as a consultant to supplement his savings. That work, however, dried up last August. With his household expenses rising and the value of his investments falling, “I decided I needed to go back to work,” Mr. McNally says.

It didn’t happen instantly. “I spent a couple months sulking,” he says. “My aspiration was to work from home, doing marketing research or sales.” Instead, he found himself entangled in “a lot of schemes.” Some Web sites, he explains, purport to pay people to participate in focus groups or surveys. Mr. McNally signed up for nearly 30 sites but never was paid. Another work-from-home job appeared more promising: scheduling appointments for salespeople to meet with prospects. But the demands were “overwhelming,” Mr. McNally recalls. “You had to set five to six appointments a day, six days a week.”

At the suggestion of his son-in-law, Mr. McNally spent a few days working in Detroit as a movie extra, which paid $75 to $100 a day. He found casting calls on Web sites including Talent6.com and wound up in a bar scene with actor Brian Dennehy. Now, he regularly trolls online for local casting calls and recommends such work for retirees.

Knowing that he “didn’t want to go into an office again,” Mr. McNally also applied for what he hoped would be reliable work at retailers including Costco Wholesale Corp., Home Depot Inc. and Target Corp. as a salesperson or cashier. But nothing materialized. Even the act of filling out job applications became dispiriting; frequently, he had to squeeze into a small kiosk or booth within the store to complete the paperwork. It “probably took me 20 minutes longer than anyone else to do,” Mr. McNally says, because he found some of the keyboards too small and the spaces too confining.

Finally, Mr. McNally applied for an opening at a small Starbucks outlet in a shopping mall, where he was fortunate enough to be interviewed by an acquaintance. He was offered — and accepted — a job as a barista. Since October, he has worked between eight and 22 hours a week, taking orders, making drinks and serving customers. On Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, he and seven other employees crowded behind the counter. The work, at times, is exhausting.

“We have to go down a long hallway off the mall to get everything,” he says. “I’m lifting heavy milk jugs and going up small stepladders to get things off the shelves. I’ve lost five to eight pounds.”

Mr. McNally is still scanning employment Web sites with hopes of finding work he can do at home. For the time being, he says, he and his wife are making ends meet.

“We’re paying the bills, and things are going along fine,” he says. “Right now, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I have many, many friends going through the same thing. You have to get over the ’sulk’ and get back onto something. They may not be what we want to do, but there are jobs available.”

Scaling Back

After retiring three years ago as a legal secretary at a large Washington, D.C., law firm, Jan Cone filled her calendar with tennis, bridge and travel. She belongs to several service groups and attended a number of national conferences last year, spending almost $6,000 in the process. At first, her Social Security checks and 401(k) withdrawals paid those bills and others. Last year, though, her investments fell 40% in value.

“If I wanted to live in my condo 24/7 and do nothing else, I could live on Social Security,” says Ms. Cone, now 68 years old. “I’m getting almost $1,900 a month. But my lifestyle is not to be a hermit.”

In October, she reluctantly started her job search. “I kind of put it off,” she says, “because I was having a lot of fun being retired and didn’t want to go back to work.” She first took a job as a sales clerk for Kohl’s Corp., the retail chain. For $8 an hour, “I had to stand on my feet for four hours a day with one 10-minute break,” Ms. Cone says. “That lasted a week and a half.”

Next, she signed up with RetirementJobs.com, an online job-search tool for people age 50-plus. Three weeks later, she found a job working Tuesdays through Fridays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. as a legal assistant in a small law firm. She currently makes $18 an hour. The office, in Fairfax County, Va., is about 14 miles from her home.

It’s quite a switch from her former firm, where, “if I wanted something done, I picked up the phone and [the support staff] came to my desk,” she says. “Here, when I come in in the morning, I start by running the backup tape [on the office computer]. My second job is to make coffee. They had to teach me how to use a postage meter.”

When asked what advice she would give others looking for work, Ms. Cone says to make it clear that you don’t expect to earn the same salary you did before you retired.

“My salary when I left in 2006 was $68,000 plus bonuses. I thought I had to put it on my résumé. [My current boss] almost didn’t offer me the job because he didn’t think I’d take it,” Ms. Cone says. “What he didn’t think about was…I’m not into business suits anymore. The woman who does his accounting said, ‘Call her. The worst thing she can say is no.’ “

On balance, Ms. Cone says, she’s glad she returned to the workplace. “This gives me a reason to get up every morning,” she says. “I’m using my mind.” Mondays are still reserved for tennis and bridge. But there’s one part of retirement she misses.

“I enjoyed pulling back the curtains in the morning, and knowing — if it was snowing or raining — that I could stay home.”

Staying in Touch

When Bob Klahre, 70, retired in 2001 as a banker who managed loan portfolios, he and his wife sold their home in Princeton, N.J., and split their time between a New York apartment near family and a vacation house in Cape Cod, Mass. Last June, after his investments, mainly in financial-services stocks, started to slip — and eventually lost 60% of their value — “we couldn’t afford the lifestyle I worked all my life to achieve,” he says. The couple gave up the rental in Manhattan and moved full time to Cape Cod, where Mr. Klahre started looking for work.

“As things got worse and worse last year,” he says, “we made a conscious decision to downsize, and I decided maybe I should try to do some consulting or look for a job.”  One of his former employees wound up at MetLife Bank, a unit of MetLife Inc., in charge of retail operations. In August, he offered Mr. Klahre a contract assignment — sorting out repurchase claims from investors on loans that MetLife now services after it acquired a mortgage business last year. He works in a loan-production office in Hyannis, Mass.

“I really don’t have any great advice, other than the age-old ‘Stay in touch with people,’ ” Mr. Klahre says. “After I retired, I would invite periodically some of the key people who worked with me to have lunch, including this young man. When you retire, the biggest mistake you can make is to detach completely.”

To that end, he recommends against relocating year-round to a retirement haven. Cape Cod, in particular, is “so isolated,” Mr. Klahre says. “We want to get back to the city as soon as our balance sheet allows for it.”

Mr. Klahre’s job has been extended through the end of this month. “I’m up to my eyeballs in nonperforming assets,” he says. Days are spent reviewing loans, working with staff members in Dallas, where the mortgage unit is based, and drafting correspondence to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and others.

“I’m enjoying what I’m doing,” Mr. Klahre says. “I’m feeling alive again. I found that I just had too much time on my hands” in retirement. “The big problem I have is my wife. She’s retired. Now, I’m back at work, and she’s by herself all day up here on Cape Cod. We have to [move] if I continue to work past February.”

Starting From Scratch

Not surprisingly, many older adults looking for work try to return to what they know — the field they worked in before retiring. But Ron Giles, 65, says the current job market rarely allows for that luxury.

Mr. Giles retired four years ago from a Dallas company where he worked as director of corporate real estate, managing about 500 office leases. He took to the road in a recreational vehicle, eventually settling in Fort Collins, Colo. While the cost of living in Fort Collins is roughly the same as in Dallas, he says, the “cost of playing” is significantly higher.

To pay for his $429 season pass for skiing and other goodies — all while his investments were being pummeled — Mr. Giles started looking for a job early last year. “I sent out literally dozens of résumés trying to make contact with people, and probably had eight or 10 interviews,” he says. “Absolutely nothing came of it.”

Looking for jobs online, Mr. Giles finally found work as a part-time merchandiser, building product displays in supermarkets for Kellogg Co. He makes $11 an hour and works an average 28 hours a week. His duties, of course, are a far cry from those of his pre-retirement days. But he says that working on the front lines, as it were, suits his personality.

“In the course of a week, I travel to eight to 10 grocery stores. I probably say hello to 100 people a day, which is very unlike my character for all of my business life. I find it delightful to have time to say, ‘Good morning. How are you doing?’ “

What did he learn from his job search? “I had a feeling when I started looking that, ‘Hey, I’m a smart dude. I flipped some buildings and made a lot of money for my company.’ And it didn’t qualify me for anything. You could have spent 30 years twirling widgets, and it doesn’t matter. [Employers] want to know what you can do in relation to what they need.”

Doing Well by Doing Good

In July 2006, Kay Wesley retired from her job of 27 years as a receptionist to care for her father in a hospice center. He died the following February. Soon after, Ms. Wesley, who lives near Omaha, Neb., began worrying about her nest egg.

“I started realizing I was going more and more into the hole,” she recalls. “I did dip into my 401(k) a couple of times, and I thought, ‘I can’t do this. I hope to live a long, long time, and that’s my buffer.’ “

Ms. Wesley began combing the classifieds in her local newspaper for part-time jobs — and came across a help-wanted ad for a franchise of Home Instead Senior Care, an Omaha company that provides nonmedical caregiving services. She decided to apply.

“I was scared,” Ms. Wesley remembers. “I didn’t put together a résumé, because I didn’t know where to start.” What she did know was that helping her father had taught her a lot about caregiving, and she discovered that she enjoyed the work. Home Instead hired her.

Today, after one year on the job, Ms. Wesley, age 69, logs 16 to 20 hours a week at $7.25 to $8 an hour. She currently works with two clients. Each Monday and Wednesday, she spends six hours helping one woman with her laundry and shopping; the two also go out for lunch or a movie. Each Thursday, she visits a retired teacher; there, she vacuums, does laundry and cleans the kitchen after taking the teacher out to breakfast.

“I helped her wrap all of her Christmas gifts, boxed them up and took them to the post office,” Ms. Wesley says. “It was important to her that she get that done.”

The work will never make her rich, Ms. Wesley says. But she brings in between $500 and $600 a month, “just enough” to ease the strains on her budget. More important, she says, “at the end of the day, I’m making a difference in someone’s life.”

Playing Geography

For some job seekers, the location of the second home they enjoyed in retirement is providing some additional employment opportunities. Gordon Scott, 61, lives in Solomons, Md., and now hopes to find work as a substitute teacher in Cocoa Beach, Fla., where he, his wife and their two sons own a condominium.

Mr. Scott retired as a police district commander in the mid-1990s and then spent 12 years teaching elementary and high-school students before retiring a second time two years ago. Shortly after, “money got tight…because of the stock market,” he says. “I’m down 40% right now.” Pension checks cover the bills, for the most part, but Mr. Scott has been dipping into cash reserves. As a result, he began looking for work.

He was hopeful about an opening at a library near his Maryland home, but didn’t get the job. “I know they liked me a lot,” he says. “But possibly the idea of my age and wondering how long I would stay [precluded an offer]. They never asked me that, but I just think that was it.” He also considered training to be a nurse, but decided that 64 (his age when that training would be completed) was too old to start working 12-hour shifts.

In Maryland, Mr. Scott was paid $80 a day to substitute. In Florida, he expects to make at least $93 a day — and possibly the $121 paid to retired teachers. He doesn’t want to relocate permanently, since he has four grandchildren in Maryland. “We’ll probably do seven months in Florida and five months in Maryland,” he says.

Mr. Scott, like many retirees today, says he is simply trying to make the best of a bad situation. “I just retired at the wrong moment,” he says. “I thought I had a great plan, and I worked the numbers for so long. But a lot of people have it a lot worse than I do. I don’t have a bad life; I just have an altered life.”