Career Change and Money: Some facts and myths
by Steve Bohler, Oxford Program Founder

“If you are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life … your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.” – George Bernard Shaw

When I graduated college, I was faced with two great job offers. One job was with a big, international investment bank, and the other was with a more intimate, employee-oriented consulting company. One offered prestige and dollar signs. The other offered me meaningful work. I made my decision after watching a Porsche drive by me towing two jet skis. At that moment, conspicuous consumption won me over.

I took the high paying job. The years in that job were wasted doing something that didn’t interest me, nor used my greatest natural talents. And I paid for that decision with 5 years of my one-and-only life. I can’t get those years back. They’re gone and so is the money I made. Was it worth it?

Money. Why we want it.

Money is the #1 concern of most people contemplating a career change. It is the fear about money and financial survival that, more than anything, keeps people from taking up the quest for their Natural Vocation and the work they love. Some voices tell you it can’t be done (while countless are doing it). Other voices tell you that you’re lucky to have any job at all and that you should just crouch down and hold on.

Over life, we accumulate more and more material possessions. We all remember the “rush” when we got an allowance, or raise, or bonus, or inheritance, or found some discretionary funds. Especially when we need it – we have become conditioned to seeing it as the highest solution. However, after we reach a new level of financial comfort, we need something even better to boost our happiness. It’s one of the reasons that people who choose to stick to a terrible but high-paying job so they can retire early, almost never do retire early.

 Interestingly, it’s not always a lack of money that stops us, but rather an abundance of it. “If I make a change, can I make the same money?” We associate having less or downsizing our lifestyle as failure. However, we typically congratulate those who have the courage to choose work they love, because we don’t.

Money. Is it worth it?

The most common time of the week to die of a heart attack is Monday at 9:00 a.m. (source: Center for Disease Control). It’s no coincidence that it’s the time when most working professionals are returning to their jobs after the weekend. But our culture is waking up. Our economy is changing from one that focuses on money to one that focuses on satisfaction. While these trends do go up and down depending on the abundance of jobs, the trend over the last 20 years is in favor of life satisfaction.

In a recent Oxford Program survey, visitors were asked if they would prefer to reach the end of their life (A) with a large bank account, nice house, and great vacation photos; or (B) with a feeling of having reached their true potential with no regrets. An astounding 80% chose B!

Law has become the highest paid profession in America, but the major law firms now spend more on keeping their lawyers from leaving than they do on hiring new ones. This is because associates and partners are leaving law in hordes for work that makes them happy. The enticement of a lifetime of wealth at the end of years of punishing 80 hour weeks has lost much of its attraction.

The research definitively shows that money does not buy happiness.

Check out these findings from renowned positive psychologist, Martin Seligman, Ph.D.:

• In under three months, major events (e.g., being fired, being promoted, winning the lottery) lose their impact on our happiness levels.

• While income in our society has increased 16 percent over the last 30 years, the percentage of people who say that they are “very happy” has decreased from 36 to 29 percent.

According to a study in Your Money or Your Life by authors Dominguez & Robin, there is absolutely no correlation whatsoever between income and happiness. In fact, people who were earning between $0 and $1000/month reported being slightly happier than people whose monthly income exceeded $4000!

In a study in the Economic Journal, it was found that an average worker would need an 800,000% rise in income to gain just a slight increase in happiness. On the other hand, people who were generally happy were more likely to become rich.

Money. Can you make lots of it doing something you love?

It probably seems risky to commit yourself to loving your work when there are many around you that seem so content with settling for less. However, the voice that tells you that you have to sell out or abandon your dreams to make a good living is a traitor and a liar.

The common misconception is that you can only receive wealth as a result of doing things you don’t want to do. This is untrue and goes against the facts. In “Getting Rich Your Own Way”, financial consultant Srully Blotnick concluded after a twenty year study of over one thousand men and women that “Like so many other thoughts about ‘how to get rich’, it sounds reasonable and is flatly contradicted by the evidence. In fact, if you don’t like your job, you are losing money. Lots of it.”

In 1960, a researcher interviewed 1,500 business school students and classified them into two categories: those who were in it for the money -- 1,245 of them -- and those who were going to use the degree to do something they cared deeply about -- the other 255 people. Twenty years later, the researcher checked on the graduates and found that 101 of them were millionaires -- and all but one of those millionaires came from the 255 people who had pursued what they loved to do! (Source: The Other 90%: How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Potential for Leadership and Life, by Robert K. Cooper.)

Many people discover that when they conquer their fears about money and dedicate themselves to finding the work they truly love, they begin to feel a wealth greater than they have ever known before. They feel richer and more prosperous. Their entire relationship with money begins to change when they no longer associate earning it with doing something they hate or even just indifferent to, but with doing something that uses their natural talents and that they believe in.

Joseph Campbell describes a “natural intelligence” that exists when you choose a Natural Vocation: “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track, which has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living...Doors begin to open for you where there were no doors and where they would not open for anyone else.”

I believe that your “Natural Vocation” must make adequate use of your natural abilities, satisfy your core needs, AND meet your financial/situational constraints. The average adult has dozens of Natural Vocations that have the potential to pay them more than they are making in their ill-fitting career. There are a select set of strategies (such as the “Trojan Horse” method, being a Minipreneur and having a portfolio career) which are focused on increasing income by way of a career change.

For example…

• Rosemary left corporate America as a successful creative director to be a freelance copywriter.

• Ben left a $600,000-a-year job as a partner in a prestigious New York City law firm to open a bakery.

• Ted worked as a salesperson for a large equipment leasing firm. He was so handy around the house (and loved it), he found a sales position in home-repair franchise where he could basically run his own business.

• Nicole left an information technology job to combine massage therapy and student counseling.

In some of their cases, they ended up making less money and in other cases they made more. But what they all have in common is that they all now report that they love what they do, the money isn’t as important any longer, and they’re twice as happy. That’s a pretty darn good investment from where I’m sitting.

If you are contemplating making a career change, but fear the financial consequences, here are some things to think about:

• If you’re making good money, but you’re miserable for most of your waking hours, what good is the money really doing you? Is it WORTH it?
• Are you actually limiting your financial potential by doing work that is not the greatest use of your talents?
• Imagine yourself on your deathbed, filled with regret, with a painful sense of having missed your life’s calling. What is it that you most regret not accomplishing?

“There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.” – John F. Kennedy

How would you like to no longer need that morning alarm clock since you're excited about leaping out of bed to do what you love?

Sign up for the Oxford Career Change Bootcamp: October 5th.
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About the Author: Steve Bohler is the founder and head coach of the Oxford Program career programs.