Can You Afford A Midlife Career Change? The Honest Truth

Following your purpose in a midlife transition can feel impossible when money fears hold you back. But what if making that change with thought and care could bring you more abundance, including money?

You may know this feeling. You’re standing at a crossroads in your life, sensing that the work you’re doing, or the life you’ve built, no longer fits the woman you’ve become. Your values and priorities may have changed, and something in you may want more meaning or purpose than what you’re currently doing. Or perhaps it’s time for you to pursue those passions that have been buried for far too long, those things that used to light you up but that you set aside years ago while you were busy being responsible.

Despite this feeling, however, you stay where you are, because every time you let yourself imagine something else, another, familiar voice speaks up. This one speaks loudly to you about the fear of money:

“You can’t afford to do this! You have bills to pay, a mortgage, and people who depend on you. Stop dreaming. You have to be realistic!”

If that’s you, your fear isn’t foolish, but it may not be telling you the whole truth.

The Fear That Deserves An Honest Answer

Money worries are real. The fear of earning less, of leaving something secure for something unknown, makes sense when you have responsibilities. I felt every bit of it myself when I left a twenty-five-year corporate career to pursue entrepreneurship and to launch my podcast.

I waited two years before I actually made the move because I was so afraid! So I understand where you may be right now, asking yourself, “Should I do this, or should I wait?” Your fear is valid, and you are not alone.

Can You Afford A Midlife Career Change? Look At The Real Numbers

So what is the real truth behind this fear of money, or the lack of it?

What I see time and time again with the women I coach is that they get so excited about pursuing other possibilities, but the moment “I can’t afford it” comes up, everything stops. But if we break that down and ask ourselves instead, “How true is that for me, really?”, we can begin to unravel it.

What do you really need each month to live? How much of the change you’re seeking can you start to pursue slowly, while you’re still earning? Many of us have never looked at the numbers, because we decided it was impossible before we gave it any real thought. And when money is the only measure of whether a change is possible, we stop dreaming.

What People Regret At The End

There is a book you may have heard of, called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, by Bronnie Ware, who spent eight years as a palliative caregiver, looking after people in their final weeks of life. Over time, she noticed the same regrets surfacing again and again in her patients, so she wrote them down. The one she heard more than any other was this: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

It wasn’t “I wish I had earned more,” or saved more, or climbed higher. At the very end, what people grieved the most was that they had lived someone else’s version of their life instead of their own.

When you weigh the cost of following what matters to you, the money belongs on the scale, of course it does. But so does the cost of staying somewhere that no longer fits, year after year.

Abundance Is Bigger Than Your Bank Balance

We were taught to measure a good life by one number, what we earn. But money is one form of abundance among many. There is the abundance of time, energy, and health, of joy, connection, and meaning, and of waking in the morning with something you actually want to move toward. You can have plenty of money and still be missing the others.

Finding Your Ikigai, Your Reason For Being

This is where finding your Ikigai, or your reason for being, becomes such a powerful guide. Your Ikigai lives at the intersection of your strengths, passions, values, and contributions.

When you begin to live in alignment with your Ikigai, abundance tends to follow in many forms. Often that includes the money too, and it can even be more than before. Something else powerful happens. When you’re finally doing the work and living the life that aligns with who you really are, the positive or anabolic energy that gets created spills into other areas of your life, and that can bring even more abundance.

The Questions To Ask At The Crossroads

If you’re standing at that crossroads now, you don’t have to make a big decision today. Reinvention is a careful plan, not a leap, and what makes it stick is the in-between, where you take the time to understand what you want before you act. That thought and care is what protects your income while you make the change, and it’s often what allows it to grow afterward.

A good place to start is to ask yourself some questions you may have been avoiding:

• What have you always wanted to do, the real version, not the practical one?
• If money weren’t a concern, what would you finally let yourself want?
• What is it truly costing you to stay?

You can’t move toward a life you won’t allow yourself to picture. So the first step is to let yourself see it.

Let Yourself See Your Next Chapter

If you’d like help seeing it more clearly, I created something to guide you. My Ikigai Clarity Assessment walks you through the four dimensions of your reason for being, your strengths, passions, values, and contributions, and shows you which of them are most and least present in your life right now, so you can see where to begin.

Your fear about money is real, my friend. With a careful plan, it doesn’t have to be the thing that decides your next chapter. If you’re looking for change in your life, your time is now.

What are you waiting for?

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