If you want to change career, it is difficult at any age, let alone when you are in your forties or fifties or even older. But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try! People are living longer these days and they are also having to work longer than their parents or grandparents.

With so few good pension schemes, not many people can afford to retire at sixty or sixty five. And if you live to be one hundred, which is no longer rare, you will probably expect to work at least in some capacity until you are eighty – unless you have a few million stashed away.
On the positive side, this doesn’t mean staying in your present job until you are eighty! Despite age discrimination laws, it’s unlikely that your boss will keep you around that long and even more unlikely that you’ll want to stay!

So deciding to make a career change at 40+ is a good move, but it may not be easy to implement. And you may feel that you have no idea which direction your new career should take.
Let’s take a look at some of the positives. You already have a good twenty or more years of solid work experience. This will not only have given you some very good skills, but will also have a pretty clear idea of your strengths and what you enjoy doing – as well as what you don’t.

One of the best ways in which to change career when you are older, is to build on what you have already got and to take the best aspects of your experience, both at work and in the rest of your life, and turn those into new income streams. This can be done gradually and will also enable you to have a very flexible working life. This means you will be in control. You may want to work full time for the next ten years and then cut down to 75% of your current workload and later to 50%. Being in control of your own career gives you this freedom.

To gain complete freedom from employers you will have to work towards becoming self-employed and you can do this slowly, experimenting with different possibilities while still within the relative security of your present job.

If you’d like to know how to do this, download this free e-book, which will show you how to build a portfolio career and enable you to change career over 40.

For general career change advice go to Career Change.

Career Change Over 40 - 6 Step Plan