Read about opportunity cost and the sunk cost fallacy.
Then… if you are reasonably convinced that you are in the wrong career field, you’ll understand why you need to plan your career shift immediately.
The mission of Career Counseling Connecticut: help career seekers find happy and successful work. I’ve been somewhat surprised by how many thirtysomething career coaching clients we have; more surprised by our career changing fortysomethings, and astonished by how many fiftysomethings are searching for their next stage career.
Twentysomething career seekers: learn lessons from older career changers. The longer you stay in a career that is a mismatch, the harder it is to live.
There are many reasons why but, for the sake of simplicity, I’ll focus on economics.
If you have an entry level job, presumably your salary will not be hard to replace if you change careers. The longer you stay, presumably the higher your income will be and the harder to replace your income.
If you are making $40,000 now, you might need a small shift to $30-35,000 if you change careers. Most people could stomach that shift if they were confident they were going towards more career happiness. If you stay in your mismatched career path for 5-10 more years, your income could be in the $60-90,000 range. At that point, your lifestyle wants/needs likely will have matched your salary bumps. For some, this would make shifting careers nearly impossible (i.e. sole breadwinner for a family with a spouse and a child or home owner with a big mortgage).
If you are in a mismatched career, contact us now.