How much career change can you afford?

August 3rd, 2007

My article on figuring out how soon you can ditch your day job is live on WORKS. Here’s how it starts:

Admit it. You’ve fantasized about turning in your letter of resignation no less than 100 times — and that’s just this month. You spend each lunch hour staring longingly out the window of your mind-numbingly sterile office at whatever footloose and fancy-free dog walker, landscape designer, or espresso-cart owner happens to be within view. And you often wonder if you’ll ever love your job as much as they seem to.

The good news is that a career you’re passionate about is always within reach. You just have to iron out a few of the logistics first, and one of the biggest is figuring out how you will afford to live while you pursue your dream. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Gather research. First, you need to determine how much you realistically stand to make in the first few years of your fantasy career. The Web is teeming with sites that can help — Salary.com, PayScale.com, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, to name a few. But don’t stop there. Talk to honest-to-goodness people who already have your dream job. Ply them with lattes and ask what salary range a newbie like you can expect. Also contact the industry associations in your neck of the woods. Many of them regularly conduct salary surveys of their members.

Do the math. Your next step is to take a long, hard look at your monthly spending. If you don’t know how much you’re shelling out for groceries, pedicures, and Mai Tais, it’s high time you learned. Save four weeks of receipts or track every cent you spend in a notebook stashed in your purse. Then use a program like Quicken to record the damage…

To read the rest of the article, visit WORKS.

Entry Filed under: Money honey, Popular articles