7

Can You Actually Afford to Change Your Career?

by Russell Clayton

Quick Takes

  • Assess your—and your partner’s—risk tolerance
  • Review your spending to identify potential cuts
  • Build or add to an existing emergency fund
  • Flesh out alternative plans
  • Test out your estimated salary
  • Set and manage your family’s expectations

Finances are what keep many of us from taking a leap and making a career change, especially when we have a partner and a family. Sure, our current job has lost its spark, but it’s stable. Dependable. Reliable. Steady. We worry and wonder: What would a career change do to our bank accounts? To our way of life? To our family? We assume that a major reinvention would involve a gap between paychecks when we’d leave our job and break ...

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