Career change

Hello!

I'm in the midst of wanting to change jobs.
I have been in the hospitality industry my whole life and cleaning vacation rentals/houses.
I'm feeling a bit burned out.  I like working with people, my customers are pretty great and I enjoy fine dining work but I don't like only making $45,000 a year.

Its just not enough. Working full time but not really able to afford much of anything. I have great credit though!

I'm 33 years old. I don't know what to do. I'd go back to school if it's worth it. I want to be more successful ND independent but more importantly I want to feel good about what I do. Environmentally aware and conscious is my goal.

I am so lost.

How did y'all "figure it out"?!

I looked at everyone I saw, what's their life? Would I like that? What parts would I like or not like? I made a double list, eliminated a lot of jobs, then got a list sort of like this  Types of Careers and considered those, and crossed off a bunch more. Eventually ended up with with one that worth me going to school to learn.

A LOT of it has to do with learning who YOU are. Anyone else's answers won't work. Until you have figured out what makes you happy, you won't be bale to make a good decision.  We all need to find our niche, what makes us personally bounce, thrive and be happy. WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY? Not just at work, but in life, as the best jobs are things that make you more yourself, and don't make you be anyone else while you are at work. Life is too short to not like most of your days.

So some personalty tests online, see if the results tell you anything useful. I like the Meyer's Brigg test.

I show up on all the testing I have done as a very self employed type, it takes a lot of work to do that, and a lot of people can't cope with the work AND the paperwork and everything else. I can't stand working for others. A lot of people think they can just start a business and it's magic. I guarantee it's not! That's where I bounce though, so it works for me.

What makes YOU bounce? How can you get paid to be the best of yourself every day? Who are YOU? Not what pays well, but what uses and emphasizes your best parts  :D

After working for the same company for over ten years, I decided I wanted to work somewhere else.  I gave them my resignation and started looking at job ads.

I had a lot of fun meeting new people and learning how to do a successful job interview.

The job I decided on was a lot of fun and taught me a new career.

I like what Pearl suggested:

A LOT of it has to do with learning who YOU are. Anyone else's answers won't work.

What do you see yourself doing or what are your interest?

When I was in high school I wanted to get a job at a National Park.  I thought that sounded like a lot of fun.  After dear hubby and I retired I finally got that job. It was fun though it was just a job not the job a school girl dreamed of.

Do you live near a Communiy College?  These type of colleges usually offer some basic type course.  It might be good to check them out to see what they offer.

I hope you find what you are looking for,

It's hard to determine your finances without knowing where you're located. $45K in Wabash, IN is pretty good moolah. $45 in Washington DC is poverty wages.

That's mostly because of housing. It's hard to help without knowing your debt situation.

Are you debt-free? Are you $50k in debt not counting your mortgage?

I have some experience in this area. I graduated from high school and went to college. Got a liberal arts degree. Magazine journalism. Great for side gigs, but factory work paid more where I lived, and I got married young and the wife didn't want to move to NYC, where ALL the great journo jobs were in the 80s and 90s.

So I got factory gigs. General Tire. Then got hired by Chrysler. Making $70k in a good year with good profit sharing.  Had a side gig in the National Guard. Became an officer. My guard check as an officer really helped out every month. Then we got deployed for a port support mission in 2004. I got sent to Fort Hood, TX for a year. Totally changed my perspective.

If you quit your job, what would you do for insurance?

When I came back from that deployment, I was done with factory work. Shortly after, Congress passed a law that gave National Guardsmen  and their family members Tricare health insurance for about $200 per month. I was free. Insurance for the fam was a big reason I stayed in factories. Chrysler offered a buyout. They payed me to quit. I signed the paperwork and found a job as an ROTC recruiter. Didn't like the commander and quit. Sold insurance for a year and hated it. Got a call from a military buddy with a lead to work at National Guard Bureau outside of DC. I took it. Major pay for full time service. The job got me introduced to emergency management. In my spare time I became a Certified Emergency Manager. Met a lot of contacts. Took master's degree courses (I still only need to write a thesis, and I've got my degree, but don't want it now!)

Got out of the military and picked up Emergency Management gigs in government, military, and education settings.

Covid hit. I was working at Guard Bureau again as a contractor. Decided to quit and move back home to Indiana to be near parents.

The company I was contracted with let me work remotely for several months after I moved back to Indiana.

I worked at a golf course for $10 per hour for a few months. Got another factory gig to tide me over until I retire next February.

I'm already drawing a military pension. Have book royalties coming in. Will get a partial pension from Chrysler starting next year. Will cash in 401ks and not have a worry in the world

Next year me and my wife will be eligible for Tricare Prime, then Tricare for Life when we're 62.

Life is good.

Make a move!  BUT:

Never quit one job until you have another. (or have $10k in savings at least)

Figure out the insurance bit.

Don't be so afraid, this is America.

Make a plan, start knocking out the little tasks, then break the bigger tasks down into little tasks and keep going. You'll make something happen.

You never know if a move was a dumb one until you press the GO button. That's life.

I never really started thinking about expanded possibilities until I unwed myself from the idea that my present circumstances are permanent. YOU decide EVERYTHING.

Jim

What is your "Art"? What comes natural. Your first love of accomplishment? I don't mean drawing pictures, although that may be your art. Is it, Kung Fu? Cooking? Mechanical Engineering? Care giving? Do what you love and the money will follow.

I think college is great if you are seeking an education.  It may be ok if you are seeking employment.   As someone mentioned, the pay level you are at would be ok in my community.  Starting pay for a teacher with a BA in my community is around $40,000.00

Pearl Sutton wrote:So some personalty tests online, see if the results tell you anything useful. I like the Meyer's Brigg test.
 

I second this. I did these, did lots of reading on the fields that seemed like potential matches for me, and watched lots of YouTube videos where folks in those fields talked about what their lives were like. Don't just get sold on all the good though - seek out what people hate about their jobs and make sure that isn't a deal breaker. For me it would be doing what you do... working with people all days and having to be hospitable lol.

As folks have already mentioned, do something that will make you happy as well, or something that you can at least tolerate. While money is always nice, a little more of it won't necessarily make you a little happier. Most likely not in the short term (read the next five years) while you're dealing with the stress of switching jobs fields and likely starting out at the bottom of whatever field you end up getting into.

The way I approached my job change was to find something that would not leave me in a worse mood at the end of the day than when I started. I know that I personally would probably have a hard time finding a job that pays me a livable and secure wage while also making me "happy," but I was able to find one that at least didn't expect me to work 12 hours a day six days a week and come home hating my life every day... Now I work regular hours, earn decent money, and am in a good enough mood to play with dirt and animals at the end of each day. And that is the part of my life that makes me happy, not my job.

Have you looked into jobs you can do remotely. Even if you take a pay cut, you can possibly make up for those by not having to commute, maintain multiple vehicles, buy work clothes, etc. Or if you are trying to earn more and perhaps mix up your routine, consider a side-gig/moonlighting outside of your regular work.

Rosie Murray wrote:

I have been in the hospitality industry my whole life and cleaning vacation rentals/houses.
I'm feeling a bit burned out.

I hear your frustration. Not to mention, I would be bored to tears doing the sorts of jobs you're describing.

But there's this ugly word "but" - I know of too many people with huge amounts of school debt - worse, some that got half-way through and couldn't finish either because they saw the ugly side of the work involved, or because they ran out of money. Not to mention, if you're looking at full time school, you loose the salary you're already struggling to get by on.

Sooo... have you tried that difficult, monotonous exercise of writing down every dime you spend every day to look for patterns and decide what hard decisions would allow you to skim money off the top into savings the second your paycheck comes in?

Have you tried that equally difficult task of identifying the difference between "wants" and "needs". We tend to think that we've already done that when money is tight, but advertising and social values are insidious, and we're bombarded with media that insists "we deserve that $5 latte", which we need to shift to the real message, "we, the company, need you to believe you deserve that so that we can take that $5 that you might actually be better off spending on organic broccoli."

Have you read the story of gert? https://permies.com/t/gert  

Lots of posters above have focused on finding work that is meaningful to you. I read an interesting report that strongly suggests that meaningful work tends to pay crap because everyone wants those jobs, but it's the nasty jobs, like sewage treatment plant workers, that still get decent pay for the work done. CEO's may not fit that description, but CEO's are largely a closed shop with a tendency towards life values that don't appeal to me.

Wow everyone!! Thank you from the bottom of my little broken heart for all the thoughtful replies!

What a wonderful forum!.

Thanks again for all the lovely advice.

Rose 🌹

I don't think I ever figured it out, but am pretty happy with my life just now. I'm based in the UK so pressures are slightly different there and now. I drifted into a degree in chemistry (which I wouldn't do now with student debt) started work in the automotive industry, did a second and masters degree in engineering, supported by my employer. I changed company three times, each time because I wasn't happy, but they seemed to think it was because I wanted more money. After twenty years it became evident that I had had no promotion in 7 years (not good in your late thirties) so I could coast on until retirement or look for pastures new. I enjoyed engineering, problem solving and making things, but there was just a bit too much box ticking going on and not enough fun and learning about technology to keep me happy. I started looking at properties with land, and then properties in Scotland, when I found this one luckily my husband was also ready to leave his very well paid job. We bought this place  and the little grocery store, having paid off our mortgage, and now earn (still after fifteen years) less than one of our previous salaries, but I never feel short of money as the only thing I feel that I can spend too much on is plants!
I think there is a saying 'work to live or live to work'. You spend too much of your life working to not enjoy it. I never started out, or expected to be a shop keeper, but have always quite liked to know what is going on and the social side of the shop is lovely. I feel my job is worthwhile and like that aspect of giving a service to the community. I'm not really an extrovert at all. I call myself a 'closet extrovert' because I like to bask in reflected glory  rather than being in the spotlight myself. I'm a better listener than talker, which suits the customer service side perfectly.
So there are two sides to working for money - the work and the money. Somehow you have to make balance the two so spending your life on it is worth it to you. Making less money is OK as long as it is enough. Having more money doesn't necessarily make you happier, although not having enough can make you sad. So you can make more money, or work on spending less of it, to gain freedom.
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

It's all about finding what lights your fire and going for it! And hey, considering a training provider in Malaysia could be a game-changer. They might offer fresh perspectives and skills that could level up your career game.

Rosie,

I had that same experience many years ago.  I will try to tell my story succinctly.

When I graduated from college, I did so right into a recession with limited job opportunities for a liberal arts major like myself.  Eventually I found a job in retail management for a company that was decent to its employees and offered respectable pay.  I enthusiastically took the position and lasted all of 6 months.  I was miserable.  For the life of me, I could not see myself tending to a store for the rest of my career.  My dreams, usually bizarre, bright technicolor turned first faded color and then black and white!  I had dreams of putting pencils on peghooks!  I thought of my life as a waste if I continued any further.  I had an eccentric music-professor neighbor who was off for summer and was so genuinely happy, not just with having an extended break, but with the satisfaction of knowing that what he had done was fundamentally worth something.  I thought to myself "why can't I do that as well?"  I quit and went back to college.  That was in 1995.

Since then (1997) I have been a high school teacher and I have loved it.  Don't get me wrong, it is a lot of very hard work, but at the end of the day, I can say that I have actually *done* something whereas in retail I was feeling utterly overwhelmed with minutiae that left me feeling like I had accomplished nothing.  And I am definitely looking forward to retirement which is 7 years away, but as this is mid-May, I am about to lose a group of Seniors (Graduation time!) that I have had for two years so I am a bit sentimental.

I don't exactly know what I would have done had I not decided to become a teacher, but it was one of the most important and rewarding decisions I have ever made.  And I don't know this directly pertains to you, but in my case I had to do some soul-searching and think about what I wanted my life to be.  While education had crossed my mind in the past, I immediately rejected it as I thought that it made too little money (it's true) and that I *needed* to make more money in private industry.  I was wrong.  And I was miserable.  Whatever money I had been making would never have been enough to make up for a life lived without a meaningful purpose.  And while the money is not great, it is livable and there are some nice benefits.  Ultimately, this is not a decision that I or anyone can make for you, but maybe an explanation of the thought processes can be of guidance to whatever decision you make.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote: While education had crossed my mind in the past, I immediately rejected it as I thought that it made too little money (it's true) and that I *needed* to make more money in private industry.  I was wrong.  And I was miserable.  Whatever money I had been making would never have been enough to make up for a life lived without a meaningful purpose.

One of my uncle's was a teacher. When his kids were grown, he started designing and building adult tricycles in his garage particularly aimed at disabled users. He didn't make a lot of money with this "side gig", but he made enough to add a bit to his pension for many years after he retired.

This sort of niche product is something a teacher can do with the extra time off they have. Find a passion be it flower arranging, painting houses, custom sewing etc and line up customers for the summer while you're off.