About - Rest Less (original) (raw)

About us

Rest Less is the UK's fastest growing digital community for the over 50s with over 1 million members.

Our primary mission is to help and inspire today’s generation of over 50s to get the most from life.

Rest Less is a digital community, platform and advocate tailored to people in their 50s and above.

We offer a wide range of services, resources, and opportunities tailored to the needs and interests of our 1 million members in the UK. We’re also committed to championing age diversity and breaking down ageist stereotypes – both in the workplace and in life in general.

Trust and transparency have always been a key priority for us and we’re incredibly proud of the reviews we get on Trustpilot and Glassdoor.

We’re continually learning and improving, and as a member-driven organisation, we welcome helpful and constructive feedback on anything – from resources you’ve found helpful to suggestions for new products and services we should be offering, and of course, areas where we’ve not lived up to expectations. We’d love to hear from you at [email protected].

Quick links...

Products and services

We offer a digital platform and mobile app that offers a comprehensive range of services and resources tailored to the needs of people aged over 50.

This includes…

Jobs and careers

We work with a number age diverse employers who are committed to embracing age-inclusive, multi-generational workforces.

Money and pensions

Helpful tips and in-depth guides to help you make the most of your money – specifically tailored for today’s generation of over 50s and covering many complex topics in depth, such as pensions and mortgages in later life.

Rest Less Travel

Designed to inspire and excite those who are looking to satisfy their wanderlust and explore more at this time of life. With helpful content, ideas, live travel events and great travel deals from a range of high-quality partners.

Health

Rest Less Dating

Catering to the romantic interests of individuals in midlife and providing the opportunity to build meaningful relationships in a safe space.

Lifelong learning

Dozens of helpful guides and resources to help our members to develop your skills, boost their career, or simply inspire a love of learning.

Rest Less Events

Offers a regular calendar of online events, activities and a community aimed at enriching the lives of its users. We run over 100 live monthly events covering a wide range of interests, fitness and hobbies to help keep individuals engaged and socially active.

Lifestyle

Contains articles, guides, and inspiration on a wide range of lifestyle topics from culture, crafts, and hobbies to home, garden, and fashion, with a focus on helping maintain an active life and a curiosity for lifelong learning.

Volunteering

Our members can explore and engage in meaningful volunteer work in their local area, or choose to contribute to causes they are passionate about.

Jobs and volunteering

Research, insight and analysis

We’re proud to have been recognised for our efforts to challenge age discrimination in the workplace, and promote the general well-being and inclusion of older individuals in society.

Rest Less has been featured frequently in various high-profile media outlets – including The Guardian, The Times, the BBC, Telegraph and FT.com – highlighting the unique and widespread challenges faced by older workers and the importance of addressing ageism in society.

Key recent insights and analysis we’ve highlighted include…

Number of part-time workers aged over 50 hits a record high – there are now 3.6 million over 50s working part-time and over 781,000 people aged 66 and older. 42% of the UK’s part-time workers are aged over 50 (September 2023)
Working beyond state pension age – nearly one in two women aged 50-65 say they plan to continue working after they reach state pension age (July 2023)
Self-employment – nearly one in two of all self-employed individuals are over the age of 50 (April 2023)
Gender pay gap – the gender pay gap remains at its widest for Britain’s oldest workers, with a 24% difference between the median gross annual pay of full-time working men and women aged in their 50s, rising to a gap of 26% for those over the age of 60. We were especially proud to see our analysis appear in a House of Lords debate over the topic (December 2022)
Long-term unemployment – unemployed older men are significantly more likely to end up in long-term unemployment than their younger counterparts with 50% of unemployed men aged 50+ being out of work for at least a year (February 2022)
Climate change – 78% of Over 50s Want the Government to Move Faster on Climate Change (August 2021)

More insights and analysis are available on our press page.

Our story

Rest Less was founded in 2018 by Stuart Lewis and Sara Stephens. This came after their families personally experienced the lack of support available for people making mid-life career moves or transitioning into retirement.

At launch, we were focused solely on helping people navigate work and career moves in mid-life, recognising that this was a key transition point for so many people – and yet there were very few resources available to help people in their 50s and 60s navigate this key career stage.

The pandemic and its first lockdowns saw people feeling isolated, fearful and anxious about their physical and mental health. Many were also worried about the impact this would have on their finances at a key stage where they needed to be saving for retirement. So we quickly expanded to help people in other areas of their lives – such as health, finances, mental health and learning – where our members told us there was a need.

The company grew fast until the arrival of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the UK labour market to freeze. Suddenly, we found ourselves unable to help people with job moves and career transitions, but saw many other ways to support our members instead.

We were pleased we could support our members in our small way during those challenging times – and, by April 2021, we had a community of 500,000 members in the UK. This helped us secure external investment so we could build out our range of products and services, and support more people.

By October 2022, our community had doubled in size again, with one million registered members in the UK. This allowed us to raise more funding to help us grow further and improve the range of products and services we offer our members.

In January 2023, we announced the acquisition of “Mirthy,” (now rebranded Rest Less Events). This is a digital platform offering online events, classes, and content aimed at reimagining retirement and offering our members access to over 100 live events every month.

In May 2023, we were delighted to pass 3,000 five-star reviews on Trustpilot ahead of a crowdfunding raise on Crowdcube in June 2023 that offered our community the chance to become part-owners of Rest Less.

In July 2023 we acquired trusted over 50s women’s lifestyle magazine Annabel & Grace, further extending our ability to support the UKs over 50s in new and helpful ways – for example, by covering topics such as fashion and recipes.

While the future is yet to be written, we remain absolutely committed to our mission of helping our members get the most out of life and look forward to an exciting journey ahead.

Our values

Mission-driven and member-centric

Empathetic and ego-free

Ambitious and focussed on impact

Data-driven, evidence-based

Trustworthy, open and authentic

Meet our leadership team

Stuart Lewis

Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer

Sara Stephens

Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer

Mark Hughes

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Hugo Ostyn

No spam. Just interesting and useful stuff, straight to your inbox. For free.

General

Money

Lifestyle

Travel

Some important information about Rest Less

When we set out to build Rest Less, we wanted to be a trusted place where you could find helpful information about a wide range of topics and issues affecting the over 50s. As a free to use resource, we try hard to provide the best information we can, but we cannot guarantee we won’t occasionally make mistakes. So please note that you use the information on our site at your own risk, and we cannot accept liability for anything that goes wrong.

All information, guidance or suggestions provided are intended to be general in nature. You should not rely on any of the information on the site in connection with the making of any personal decisions and you should always do your own in-depth research first.

Accuracy of Information – We work hard to make the information provided on Rest Less as accurate as possible when published. We are not perfect however, so can make no guarantees as to the completeness or accuracy of the information on the site. Deals, offers, jobs and prices can change, and providers may decide to alter them after publication.

Links to third-party websites - Where we provide links to content or products and services available on other third-party websites, these are provided purely for your convenience and we cannot be held responsible for any content, or any of the products and services offered on any website that we link to.

We do not offer financial advice – As a journalistic site, Intrepid Owls Ltd (trading as Rest Less) does not provide financial advice and no content or articles on the site should be regarded as financial advice. You should always do your own research before choosing any financial product so that you can be certain it is right for you and your specific circumstances.

Rest Less is an Introducer Appointed Representative (IAR) of Seopa Ltd (FRN: 313860).

How does Rest Less make money – We make money through advertising and commission from affiliate links, which enable us to offer Rest Less as a free service to our users. The content on this page may use affiliate links, which track traffic from our website to a third party provider and enable us to receive a commission or payment from any traffic we refer.

* Affiliate links on this page have an * next to them. We place enormous importance on our editorial independence and the integrity of our content which means that we will never change how we write about something as a result of an affiliate link.

Any prices shown are subject to availability and may go up or down. To see the latest accurate pricing, please visit the provider's website.

When using any of our marketplaces – e.g. jobs, courses, energy comparison etc. We may receive money from third parties who are listed on our marketplaces e.g. an employer paying to advertise a job, or a course or energy provider paying a commission to us.

We hope you find Rest Less a useful resource and we would welcome your feedback at [email protected] on how we can make it even better. For more information on any of the above you can read our fullterms and conditions, privacy policy and cookie policy.

Rest Less is a trading name of Intrepid Owls Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales with registration number 11402887 and registered address at Rest Less, 47 Butt Road, Colchester, Essex, CO3 3BZ, United Kingdom. ICO registration ZA461958. VAT registration 301 5191 51.