Financing Career Changes: What It Really Takes To Move In Midlife

Forbes

18-05-2025

Richard Alderson, CEO
As working lives stretch across six decades and the pace of workplace disruption accelerates, career changes are becoming a feature of the new 60-year career. Getting good at these transitions requires knowing how to fund them. The idea of staying in the same job or even the same field for life is fast becoming obsolete. Increasingly, professionals in midlife are yearning—some by choice, others from necessity—for reinvention.
But if there's one thing that stops them in their tracks, it is money.
Finances are often the silent saboteur of career transitions. A recent UK-based survey by Careershifters and Phoenix Insights reveals just how deep this anxiety runs. Almost everyone (73%) considering a career change worries about the financial impact, resulting in only 8% feeling confident enough to proceed with a move.
This is a sobering statistic—and one that urgently needs reframing. Because career change doesn't just happen at the beginning of our working lives anymore. For many, it will increasingly (and repeatedly) occur in our 40s, 50s, and 60s—and we need better financial strategies to support these second, third (or more) acts. Especially as the OECD has proven that actually making a change can boost your career - and your salary.
Yet much of the financial anxiety around career change is based on assumptions, not reality.
The Dominant Emotion About Career Shifts: Fear
As the UK's Careers Can Change campaign highlights, successful career reinvention is more about mindset and planning than miracles or massive windfalls. It takes clarity, support, and sometimes, just enough of a cushion to make the leap feel possible.
As Richard Alderson, founder of Careershifters, puts it: 'The biggest barriers we see are not financial, but psychological. It's fear—of the unknown, of instability, of getting it wrong. But it's also a lack of exposure to possibility. You cannot be what you cannot see.'
Perception vs. Reality
Whether you're dreaming of leaving the corporate grind for a purpose-led path or considering a return to work after caregiving, burnout, or a trip around the world, here are five key lessons from those who've made it happen.
Some career changes will cost more than others. Some may come with short-term dips in income, others with unexpected upside. Until you've explored the real numbers—minimum income needed, retraining costs (if any), and timeline to re-entry—you're navigating blind. Replace fear with facts.
Successful career changers don't have a magic sponsor or fund, they cobble together support from a range of sources: Most used personal savings, many cut down on regular spending, and a minority leaned on family or partners.
Getting The Money To Move
There's no one-size-fits-all approach, and you'll likely use more than one strategy. The point is not perfection, but planning.
Our money beliefs are shaped early—by parents, culture, class, and gender. These stories can silently sabotage our boldest aspirations. Are you holding back because you were raised to believe work must always be secure? Or that 'starting over' is irresponsible at a certain age? Bring the biases to light and consciousness. Then they can be rewired.
Avoiding your budget is a recipe for anxiety. Understand your baseline monthly needs, the gap a career change might create, and how long you can afford that gap. There are a growing number of online resources to help. Careershifters built a free Career Change Budget Calculator complete with a 'How to Finance Your Career Change' quiz (resource links below). Planning boosts both realism and resilience.
Talk to people. Trusted friends, family, colleagues. Not for permission, but perspective. As Alderson stresses, 'Career change is a process of innovation. It's messy, iterative, and filled with dead ends. It's not meant to be done in isolation. Do it with others—it accelerates everything.'
Real-life stories offer both inspiration and grounding. Take James Moan, a former teacher who transitioned to personal training. He took a 50% pay cut—but the payoff in energy and satisfaction has proven worth it. 'Things were tough in the beginning,' he says, 'but now it's balanced out, and I'm far happier.'
Ashley Maready, on the other hand, pivoted from the museum sector into freelance personal finance writing—and saw her income increase. 'If I'd known my life could look like this a few years after switching,' she reflects, 'I would have gotten serious about it much sooner.'
Ash Gornall
Ash Gornall moved from corporate training into launching a fire solutions business. 'Money was the most stressful part of changing careers,' he admits. 'There's a lot to be said for a steady pay-check. But having savings as a buffer made all the difference.'
These stories highlight the wide spectrum of financial outcomes. Career change isn't always a climb—it can be a dip before a rise, or a dip you choose to accept. But with foresight and support, it can be managed rather than feared.
The Careers Can Change survey had 1,000 UK-based respondents but found an important gendered dimension to their research: 70% of respondents were women. Women, already more likely to pause careers for caregiving, often face greater financial fears when contemplating a shift. Yet they also lead the way in redefining work on their own terms—especially in midlife.
Alderson confirms this imbalance. 'Two-thirds of our audience are women. They're often more open to exploring change, more willing to ask for help. Men are increasingly engaging too, especially when triggered by a life event—illness, redundancy, or bereavement.'
This isn't just an issue of personal choice anymore—it's a feature of our ageing societies with their much longer working lives. The size and scope of the need to collectively upskill and reskill labour forces means it also offers a broader opportunity. For financial institutions, employers, and policymakers to recognise that supporting career transitions is an integral part of any longevity strategy. If we're expected to work longer, we'll need the infrastructure—flexibility, retraining, income bridges—to pivot when our interests, industries, or circumstances shift.
A half-century ago, we defined work by permanence. Today, we define it by adaptability.
Reinvention is the new résumé. The question isn't if you'll change careers, it's when—and how. Midlife shifts may mean temporary instability, but they can unlock long-term alignment. More purpose, more autonomy, sometimes even more income.
But only if we stop letting money fears keep us stuck.
That's where initiatives like Careers Can Change are invaluable. They offer not just tools and templates, but hope—and honesty. Their financing toolkit includes quizzes, decision trees, and calculators (see below). Not to map the 'perfect path,' but to help each person navigate their own, eyes wide open.
In Alderson's words: 'This isn't just about one shift. It's about building the mindset and the transition skills to navigate the many changes we'll face over longer working lives. We call it career innovation. And it's a capability we all need to develop.'
In the end, financing your midlife career change isn't just about money. It's about belief—and a plan.