Finding a path through life at the age of 40 with no real career prospects and two kids can be a daunting and overwhelming task. However, it is important to remember that it is never too late to change your life and pursue your passions. In this situation, where you have experience in something you don’t enjoy and a degree in Business, you have a foundation to build upon as you embark on a new career journey.
Firstly, it is crucial to assess your skills, strengths, and interests. While management may not have been fulfilling, reflect on the aspects of your previous roles that you did enjoy or excelled in. This introspection will help you identify transferrable skills that can be applied to other industries or career paths. It is worth noting that many skills acquired in management, such as organizational abilities, leadership qualities, and problem-solving skills, are highly sought after in various professions.
Next, consider researching different industries or fields that align with your newfound interests. Explore career options that may leverage your business degree but take you in a different direction. Look for industries that are growing and in demand, offering stability and potential for growth. Identifying such industries will increase your chances of finding job opportunities that match your skill set.
To enhance your marketability in a new field, acquiring additional education or certifications may be beneficial. While returning to school may seem daunting, there are numerous flexible options available, such as online courses or part-time programs. Look into courses that will expand your knowledge and provide you with the necessary qualifications to enter your desired field. Depending on the industry you choose, courses in project management, finance, marketing, or technology can greatly enhance your skill set.
Additionally, networking plays a crucial role in any career transition. Reach out to friends, family, and acquaintances to learn about potential opportunities or gain insights into different fields. Attend networking events, industry conferences, or join professional associations related to your new career path. Building relationships with professionals in your desired industry can open doors and provide valuable guidance as you navigate this journey.
Consider reaching out to a career counselor or coach who specializes in mid-life career changes. They can provide personalized guidance, help identify transferable skills, and assist you in developing a strategic plan for finding a new career path. A career counselor can also provide support and guidance in building an effective resume and cover letter tailored to your desired field.
Furthermore, it is important to take into account any financial limitations when making a career transition. Saving money and budgeting wisely will go a long way in helping you achieve your goals. Prioritize your expenses, cut back where possible, and allocate funds towards education or professional development courses that can enhance your employability.
When it comes to job hunting, it is essential to tailor your resume and cover letter to highlight the skills and experiences that are relevant to the new industry you are pursuing. Emphasize transferable skills, such as leadership, problem-solving, and communication abilities. Additionally, consider volunteering or taking on freelance work in your new field to gain practical experience and make valuable industry connections. This can help bridge the gap in your resume and demonstrate your commitment and enthusiasm for the new career path.
Finally, don’t underestimate the value of perseverance and a positive mindset. Starting over can be a challenging process, but it is crucial to remain determined, patient, and open to new opportunities. Focus on the long-term goals you have set for yourself and remind yourself of the reasons why you have embarked on this journey: to provide a better life for your children, financial stability, and personal fulfillment.
While the concern about companies being hesitant to invest in someone with limited working years ahead may seem valid, it is essential to remember that companies value experience, dedication, and passion regardless of age. By showcasing your transferable skills, commitment to personal growth, and genuine enthusiasm for the new career path, you can overcome any doubts or biases that potential employers may have.
In conclusion, finding a new path through life at the age of 40 with no real career prospects and two kids is undoubtedly challenging, but it is not impossible. By reflecting on your skills, exploring new industries, gaining additional education or certifications, networking, saving wisely, and remaining determined, you can successfully embark on a new career journey that will provide you the financial stability, personal fulfillment, and opportunities you are seeking for yourself and your children. Remember, it is never too late to start over and create a brighter future.
Would you like to own your own business?
People overstimate the times it requires to be qualified in a field, what field of work do you see yourself happy in ?
You have kids. Providing for them trumps your personal job fulfillment. Management is a very broad field. Maybe your previous company was terrible, have you tried other companies or ones in a different field?
Any other career you are going to start at the bottom, pay for training / school and not making money. It’s a huge sacrifice and gamble for your whole fam.
Do you have a partner? Do they work?
I started over with a state agency.
Leverage the skills you have to get you into a good paying job that will grow you on the job into a new discipline. I’m in tech development and I am constantly hiring and developing project leaders out of engineers. If you come work for me as a project leader I can teach you software development. Etc.
if you were a manager you probably worked with a ton of spreadsheets. learning SQL is not a big jump from excel if you got the feel for it, and you’ll veery quickly know if you dont. data analysts jobs pay pretty well if you have actual operational experience, as most of the people working there only ever worked with SQL so they need to be spelled out what the managers want to see in numbers. being able to do both sides of the equation is a pretty stable job in most companies. it’s also a very rewarding job, tje feeling of knowing what’s right and slowly building up the results from the extremely small set of building blocks of SQL functions is very satisfying.
If you’re handy, it may be worth talking to local trade unions. Carpenters, masons etc. are crying for people and a lot of the unions with help you through getting your seals/tickets.
If you were a decent manager then you should be fairly competent in what ever line of work you managed. Start there.
At 40, I owned and operated a trade business that was barely afloat. A well paying opportunity opened at a local power plant. It was outside my wheelhouse of experience, but they trained. I took full advantage of the 401k working there for 20 years and was able to retire at 60. Being disciplined, I was able to take control of my debt while purchasing a home and car while paying cash for my children’s college. It’s achievable if you dedicate yourself to your goals.
Keep your gig jobs, as you level up your skills.
Focus on the high leverage skills that are in demand and fit your personality.
The highest leverage skill is to learn entrepreneurship. You have to eventually be doing your own thing, but that means learning a whole new skills set. The #1 of which is managing risk, and resources.
You don’t need to worry about companies thinking you “only have a couple of decades more to work” so try to get that out of your head. Most people these days (I’m early 40s myself) are not spending their entire careers with one company nor are companies expecting decades of commitment. If you were say in your late 50s or early 60s that might be more of a concern.
You don’t have to work in management to use the skills you learned along the way. Time management, good prioritization, able to track and manage different ongoing projects/tasks/work streams, communication, etc are all skills that a good manager should have that are absolutely transferable to a lot of different kinds of work.
Honestly, people/companies will only care about your college degree for your first job or two afterwards so that’s not going to be super relevant or hold you back. You should look at the kind of work you do want to do and then start thinking about your experience and how you can tailor that to the key words/phrases for resume/CV to get past HR or basic screenings, then start thinking about how you can discuss your experience in relevant ways for that kind of role.
What do you want to do? What hobbies out things interest you? There’s plenty of other ways to get into different fields than a degree or experience (such as IT work where various certificates or courses can matter way more).
I lead a large team right now (40+ people) and I constantly talk to people interested in developing their career to think very carefully about what they’ve already done and how that applies to a lot of things. We primarily focus on data analysis and do a ton with spreadsheets and manual workarounds because we get no support. So many people get bogged down on “I know how to do XYZ (company specific data points or work)” and don’t realize that what they really have are developed are great critical thinking, decision making, and data analysis that are applicable in soooooo many different ways. If you’ve spent most of your career in management and you’re 40 that has to be at least 10-15+ years experience and I guarantee you have a lot of skills and experience that you could apply to a lot of very different jobs and industries than what you worked in if you really think it through.
That’s not to say that you might be paid less than you were as a manager or take time to get established into a new type of work but you should be able to get in the door and go from there. Good luck!
Get good at bartending. You make cash every night, usually have fun, and you can network.
There is always life hacks and great hopes when you dominate sales and understand the weapon of marketing to promote whatever product you want. Give it a try.
School bus driver. You get time off in the middle of the day
Mobile notary, signing agent.
Get your real estate license and bust your ass.
I’m a career changer too. Prior lawyer, hated it. I now work in insurance (claims specialist). Interesting, great benefits… we all have really unique backgrounds on my team…. Just takes analytical thinking and organization. Depending on the type of claims worked, salaries are typically between 50k-100k.
How do you feel about middle grades or high school kids? Many states have career and technical education programs at those levels. The basic requirements are a two or four year degree in the business field, and some years of relevant experience. You then have three to five years to work on a lateral entry teaching certificate or degree. You can google your state+CTE, or a nearby state if you’re in commuting distance.
Edit: Many water treatment plants are hard up for technicians. The training can usually be done through a community college, and you may qualify for a vocational rehab program if you can meet their requirements.
Check out Product Management.
Managing a product versus people!
Just enjoy your time with the kids! You have your whole life to make money. But you only have so much time with the kids!
Career talk and life goals is all about perspective! And that perspective will change as you age and you’ll soon realize the only thing that matters is time, and you’ve lost a lot of it!
Are you happy? Are the kids happy? Then who cares where you are at in life! As long as they’re smiling when you walk in through door nothing else matters! Everything else is just background noise!
I picked up a hammer and a drill about 5 years ago and started learning to fix shit. I now make a good living working for a rental management company (as a contractor, I’m self employed). Been a wonderful change from my previous careers in sales and sales management
Non profit work – you can help folks with barriers find meaningful work.
Progressive Insurance – if you have a BA you can start as a claims adjuster, range: $55 – $65,000 depending on where you live.
Progressive also provides a company vehicle in certain roles.
If you want to do physical work id recommend joining the ibew. sign the books and itll take a couple months for you to get the call but once you do, great pay and benefits with regular raises await you
I am a huge fan of the “red card” and “green card” approach. I know it worked for me in moving from a job that I tolerated to a job I love. If you are working, you can do it over time to get a better long term picture, but if you are between jobs, it might work by looking back at your last job.
Once a week, take some time to think about what you did during the week that you absolutely dreaded. The times where every minute felt like an hour. The things you kept putting off or finding any excuse not to do. Each of those goes on a “red card”.
Think about the things you did where you got into a flow. Where the time flew by. Where you planned to do it and looked forward to doing it. And you felt good about it when you were done. Those go on “green cards”.
As you build your deck of red cards and green cards, look for themes or common threads. When you start looking for a new job, look for one where you would be doing more green card things and fewer red card things.
It’s not perfect, and it’s not for everyone. But it’s something you could try that might give you some direction. Good luck!
Creative outlets? Use your business skills to get your creations out there?
40 and a new direction is very doable… single parent here, I worked full time while working on my master’s. Was it hard to juggle? Yes….was I tired almost every day of a week for almost 2 years? Yep…but it was so worth it. My career took off and I was able to retire from corporate life with a pension 15 years later.
40 is a great starting point, you’ve got a lot of life and work experience under your belt. Now 20 or 30 years ago, your age may have been an issue but not in today’s market. Make plans and pivot in a new direction…your future self will thank you.
Which industry did you work in? We need some more information.
I think you will have a choice of doing the things you like, or do things that put food on your table. Sometimes, the best choices aren’t the sexiest. I don’t know what about management you hated, but one field adjacent is project management. It covers many industries, and most offer remote work. If you are at all it skilled, the cybersecurity fields pay pretty well once you have some experience under your belt. I would find something soon, though. The first few years starting out from scratch are always to most grueling, but after that, things should be gravy, and you still have a lot of years out in front of you.
You also have life experience. You’ll find you’re more wanted then you can imagine.
The average tenure at companies is less than 2 years – no one hiring is expecting you to be in a job longer than 4 years.
buy a motorcycle
Look up ‘Future Authoring Program’ which is a small series of questions and exercises designed to explore yourself and your life situation and help to design the steps and options available to you so you can be exactly where you need to be in 5 years to have a fulfilling life.
Even if you don’t do the program have a serious think about dedicating several full weekends to exploring career guidance, finding the intersection between what you might love to do for work, and the pathway there given your current experience, personality tendencies, and home circumstances.
The good news is that ‘just suck it up and do it for your kids’ is already what you’re doing. It can only get better from here so for the next few weeks, ask your wife for some dedicated free time together and apart to devote to this.
Good luck!
It is possible to get qualified quickly as a draftsmen then WFH and advance your qualification to structural drafting. Working as a contractor from home is seriously so easy and once you get licensed you can score some big jobs for a lot of money and no middlemen skimming money from you.
I went to nursing school when I was 33. If you already have a degree, you can get into a fast track RN program. Nursing offers a lot of flexibility in hours and types of work you can do.
I’m writing this assuming you are in the US. Go look at jobs with the government in Contracting (Job Series 1102) on USAJobs. I’m 41 and am starting a new career in that. I’ll never be rich, but it’s a decent job with fair pay, benefits and plenty of paid time off between Federal holidays and your PTO you earn. You could also look into Program Analyst or Management Analyst jobs as well.
You, no doubt, have very valuable skills that you can turn into something new. Allow yourself to think outside the box of “I’m a manager.” Maybe government work won’t be for you, but there are options out there for you.
Just had a look through your post history because you didn’t give a lot of details. Man, I really feel for you and how tough your life is right now. You’re really struggling and I am so sorry you are having to wear the financial burden for your sick wife and 2 kids. You really love your wife and kids and I can’t possibly imagine how hard it is to be in that situation. You’re really brave and much stronger than you realise.
You have been asking the same question for years now – I wonder what practical steps you have taken to fix your situation?
Here are some observations:
1) No more video games until you have sorted out your career path. They are a time suck and escape from how tough everything is for you. The games you play are essentially ‘life simulator’ games of adventuring and time wasting, designed to make you feel productive and give you a dopamine rush for achieving things. Limit to one hour per week or if you can’t do that for 6 months it’s time to go cold turkey.
2) Do you have any friends and family who can help with the burden at home with your carer responsibilities and with the kids? If your wife is going blind she needs to be on disability asap and you really need the help one way or another.
3) She needs to somehow contribute financially or via disability payments. Involve her in this planning and have her work out how she can be productive for her kids and also society as a whole. This could be call Center work, disability placement work, volunteering – but cut out the short term fixes like video games and pony collecting. I really feel for how hard this is going to be for you both but you have a larger responsibility to your children. She needs a wider support network and so do the children. Also if she is spending $4k on tiny ponies cut off access to credit etc.
4) once you free up several days per week of free time by not playing video games and escaping from life you now have a crucial window to find something to do that you GENUINELY regard as meaningful. Something that makes you want to strive as much as the best video games do. With the kind of adhd brain you have this is going to be hard but it’s time for you to build some self respect and self worth and make something of your life.
5) as I said in my previous reply, the ‘self authoring suite’ of programs will be a great place to start.
6) here are some more ideas about potential career pathways for you. First of all – forget about IT it’s way too boring for you for you, and too hard to get good enough to beat out offshore workers. I would also rule out a home business for now. You don’t have the discipline or money and your home situation is extremely distracting and unhelpful.
You need some structure in your day and someone else to give that to you – it won’t be easy, but start to investigate the following areas: working in a tabletop /card game shop (retail manager of a sector you actually know and enjoy), patient transport / working for a hospital (boring but meaningful and has a social interaction which you hate but also really need), work your way up from the bottom of the biggest companies in your area that have big infrastructure and do anything to get in the building (even as lower level management) – reason is big companies promote from within and have lots of different sectors that suit different personality types. Maybe try local government or council / parks. You need a boss and regular hours and someone to do the thinking for a while and also help you with career progression. .
Finally, good luck. Please get some psychological support from friends and family, and if you don’t have that then part of your journey is to work to make some genuine IRL friends. Dedicate the next 2 years to practically fixing your work situation so you can thank yourself later.
There’s a teacher shortage, if teachers are paid decently where you live you might look into substitute teaching to see if it’s for you.
Genuine answer; learn Spanish and change countries to somewhere in south America (Bolivia comes to mind. One is dollar is worth $33 there) Save up for a year -if you don’t have savings+ and start fresh. Your USA money will go much much further in Bolivia so youd be starting from scratch with a highly highly desirable skill (speaking/writing English) and a big big financial cushion to get settled in a good part of town with. The working car part might have to be abandoned or swapped for a motorcycle but you could own property and live well in a good neighborhood. Worth a thought
I went back to school at 34 for an engineering degree. I have 2 kids. I moved to a city with cheapish housing, for my country anyway, and bought a place, built a suite in the basement and rented it out and that covers 95% of my mortgage.
What do you want to do? Just do it.
What was it about management that you hated?
First step for any of that:
Don’t have kids.
I graduated from a Community College at 46 and after 42 months in federal prison with a 2-year degree in Network Administration and Engineering. Got an internship the summer between years and got hired on permanent when I graduated. Now I’m the Sr. SysAdmin for a medium size business. Someone gave me a chance, I’m sure you’ll be fine.
What kind of management? Were you managing work that you find interesting? That might be a logical pivot.
For instance, if you managed a development team, maybe you should go to a code boot camp.
I’ll add that the same job can feel very different at different companies depending on the culture.
What sort of management, exactly?
I can eat a lot of crow as a manager making well into 6 figures and would have one hell of a hard time just peacing out to do gig work below the poverty line, especially when I have two kids to care for. However, one can also be in management by being a shift manager at fast food restaurants. There’s no shame in either; but “management” is so vague that it’s going to be hard to give some sound advice without a little more info.
There’s solid advice in this thread but most folks are assuming you’ve got white collar, “nine to five”, desk job management on your resume.
Without a little more detail this may as well be “I’m 40 and have worked but hated all the jobs I’ve had and just want to make enough money to not worry about money”
My brother decided to be an electrician at age 45. Served a full 5 year apprenticeship and worked as an electrician until he died from brain cancer.