Change careers without going broke

You should also rebalance your investment accounts to better reflect your new situation. Your holdings should reflect your new situation. Mike Benoit, a managing director at DiMeo Schneider & Associates in Chicago, moves his clients into more conservative investments. He recommends diversifying asset classes, including various types of bonds and equity, real estate, and even more obscure investments such as timber. Others recommend using puts or short funds to hedge equity positions.

• Video: Green-collar jobs

Whatever the strategy, realize that you don't have the financial safety net of your former job. You have less time to wait for a market comeback when you're in your 50s.

"Anyone can handle the upside to the market," Benoit says. "We want to know the impact if you have a down market."

Maintaining your network

Of course, there's more than monetary risk involved. If you leave a job in your 50s, it will be very hard to get back in again if your career change doesn't pan out.

"Now you're in your 50s and trying to compete with people in their 30s and 40s," financial planner Nick Massey of the Householder Group says. He recommends keeping your network intact, just in case.

Burns advises making your departure a feel-good experience for everyone involved, even if you were miserable. Let people know how great it was working with them, tell your boss how much you learned from him. They'll remember you fondly and, perhaps those positive impressions will help ease your way back in, should it become necessary.

Reyes, now 62, kept in touch with his co-workers for his first year off the job. But he soon realized there would be no turning back. He took some creative writing classes at a community college, and that turned into a job tutoring other students. From there, he applied to Wayne State University's Ph.D program in English literature. He's now working on his dissertation on early American Romantic authors -- think Hawthorne and Melville -- and teaching classes. He expects to finish his doctorate in two years.

How did it work out for Reyes? He says he didn't do everything right, but he ultimately made the correct decision.

"The teaching job has frustrations, but I don't feel burned out," Reyes says. "I feel fresh and energized now."

This article was reported and written by Ben Levisohn for BusinessWeek.

Published Oct. 29, 2007

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