You may think that only the young have difficulty deciding what it is that they want to do with their lives. Truth is, I’ve met so many people my age and older who, after spending a lot of money and time on a college education and many years working in the field that they had studied, realize that they are unhappy with their career choice. Many of these people question returning to school or changing careers completely because, of course, they’ve invested so much into the career that they now have. I’ve known teachers who have gone on to law school, and lawyers who have become teachers.
We know that working in a field for a while affords many of us great opportunities: for advancement, for networking, and particularly for salary. If you are a teacher you know that you get a set amount of pay depending upon how many years you have vested into that job, and each year your pay goes up(hopefully) until, eventually, you have capped out at a certain amount and just receive small increments to a tune of a thousand or two dollars for the rest of your life. A lot of government jobs are the same way. Private sector employment differs in many cases, as you often are able to continually move forward on the salary scale until retirement (and bonuses can be a great perk as well).
So pay becomes one thing that holds people back from leaving a job that they loathe and going on to do something that they feel they would like. When you start off in a new field, you’re basically starting off on that salary scale as well. Those with more experience than you will make more and, chances are, if you don’t have experience in that area then you may be starting off making what those fresh out of college are bringing home. This idea is daunting for many, particularly those that are the breadwinners in the family, or for those families that depend upon that second income to get by or to maintain the lifestyle they are currently living.
If you are considering changing a career later in life and you are concerned about the possibility of a pay cut there are several things that you should consider before determining if that change is right for you and your family.
First, investigate not only the starting off point for the new career in regards to pay but the growth potential as well. If you start off making half of what you are making now but you have the potential to narrow that gap considerably in the first few years, it just may be worth the risk, especially if you are very unhappy in your current position.
Investigate not only the growth potential in the salary but the time it might take for you to get that pay raise. If you can close the gap quickly, no problem; if it will take ten or fifteen years, that could be a huge problem. Look at your potential income in both fields and compare. Set them up in a spreadsheet or write them down on paper if you need to see what it looks like over the years.
Investigate your finances. Can they handle a cut in pay? If you are to quit your current job and start one making considerably less, how will you handle your monthly bills? Can you do without your salary? If your salary is one that is depended upon for certain items, such as food, you have to make sure that a change in pay will not put you in the red at the end of each moth. If your salary is kind of like icing on the cake, it won’t matter as much, and the pay cut may not do you much harm.
Look at the number of hours you will be working and the ones that you work now, and use that when you figure out how much you really make each hour. If you are spending sixty plus hours a week at work but the new job would require far less time, and the cut in pay is not that huge and is doable in your family’s monthly budget, then the change in careers may not be that big of a deal. The time that you will have to spend with family may make all the difference in the world.
Determine where each career tops out according to pay. If your current career stops at, say, $55,000 but that new career goes twenty thousand beyond that amount, a change just might do you good!