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Changing Careers Late in Life - Making the Right Arrangements

Changing Careers Late in Life - Making the Right Arrangements When you move out of your familiar area of expertise to something your gut te... thumbnail 1 summary
Changing Careers Late in Life - Making the Right Arrangements

When you move out of your familiar area of expertise to something your gut tells you you will be a smash hit at, and that your friends and family tell you you're crazy to consider, how exactly do you handle all that doubt? And if this is how everyone thinks when they are on your side, think about what it will be like convincing the hiring manager how you should be given a chance at an all new career. How do you know that you're not going to turn out like Michael Jordan switching to golf years ago? I worked for the government in Michigan for 18 years before I finally decided to give up on pencil pushing. If it should ever occur to anyone to change careers, it should be someone who works for the government. There is a reason why "going postal", happens at the post office most of the time.

What I did was, I decided to go to work for myself. I found out that I could cash in my pension right away; so I opted for a partial pension, and cashed my pension for a $200,000 payout. I always regretted not exploring my academic talents enough. It's just that as a 22-year-old kid, I was tired of depending on my parents, and wanted to strike out on my own. Now I was 49, I felt I had explored the "striking out" as far as it would go, and it didn't seem like I made the right choice all those years ago. I wanted to stop being reasonable or sensible, and I wanted to really find out how good I would be at a strange, new and mysterious occupation. This was the mother of changing careers. I didn't even have the qualifications.

Everyone knows the risks - the new career would be totally new to you. You'd have to start at the bottom, with kids a half your age. If the hiring managers say you are too old and over-qualified to work on a young team, you could be in a real pickle. Changing careers is not for everyone - it is only sensible, if your specific situation works out well. If you just feel stilted and dissatisfied in your current career, a possibly attractive alternative career, will still feel stilted if they pay you a third of what you used to make. Before you make a change, you need to really think of how much you love that other job, and how much you're willing to give up for it in hard work, less time to yourself and less money. You don't want to turn out like George in Seinfeld after a quick and haughty job resignation.

When I first got my hands on a large sum of money all at once like that, I do admit that I let it run away with me. I ended up not trying hard enough in the beginning, and wasting the money I had. The first thing you need to do is to put yourself on a strict budget, and never deviate from that, so that you have all the time you need working on changing careers. Restructuring your investments to better go with your new "finding yourself" situation, should also be a priority. You need to spread it out among various safe and conservative bonds and equity, and often, in land or other property. You need to make absolutely sure that it's conservative, because if something goes wrong with your investments, you're not 20 anymore, to make it back.

And of course, you don't want to make your departure at your old job by burning any bridges. Make sure that you show everyone how much working with them meant to you, especially with the boss. If things go very badly with your career change plan, you do want to be able to crawl back.