One thing that is certain these days, change is a constant – sometimes within our control and often not.
You may be at a stage in your life where many significant responsibilities are behind you. Perhaps you’ve paid down a mortgage and, if a parent, watched your children build lives and start careers of their own. At this stage, you may start to reassess your own career and life goals to determine whether you want to continue working full time, reduce your hours and work part time, or provide more flexibility around the way you work within the finance sector by having a portfolio career or, terming it another way, career self-management.
It is up to you to determine if this type of change will suit the life you want to live and plan accordingly. As a way of kick-starting the process, ask yourself the following:
- Does your family financial status permit career flexibility?
- Do you enjoy a changing routine with associated uncertainty? Or, do you prefer clarify around your schedule?
- What are your key skills, interests, satisfiers and differentiators?
- What are you passionate about and enjoy doing?
- What motivates you most of all?
- What does your ideal work/life balance look like for the next five, ten or twenty years?
Once you have thought through the above, you can start to think about the options that may be available to you for your future career. Some may include:
- Working permanent, part time or on a casual basis for one or more employers in the finance sector;
- Undertaking volunteer work providing input, ie on a committee or steering group in an area you are passionate about, or volunteering specific hours of labour;
- Consulting or contract work within your field of expertise;
- Starting your own business, ie financial advisor, tax agent etc or invest in a business;
- Teaching or lecturing at a tertiary institution;
- Undertaking study in an area of interest, or start a degree course as a mature student;
- Undertaking a brand new sport, hobby or adventure travel experience.
Consider your goals and how you can achieve them to find the perfect balance in both your personal and professional life. Remember, most limitations to what we can do often only exist in our minds.
Assess whether the benefits and rewards of continued full-time employment are what you desire and, if they are not, start developing your plans for a portfolio career using skills developed in the finance sector.
Only you can be in control of your own destiny – personally and professionally. Now is the time to take that control and live the life you want to lead!