Thinking Outside The Box

A friend of mine suggested to me yesterday that I get more creative in looking for work locally, that maybe I'm giving up too soon on the local market. It was a good challenge to my thinking and made me wonder...

I responded that my skills and professional qualifications are pretty specialized, which limits the job market for me to only a few kinds of employers, unless I was willing to change careers quite a bit.

That, then, becomes an issue of lifestyle. My income is based in large part on those professional qualifications. Take away those qualifications from the job market and I go back in salary a lot - maybe as much as half. With mortgage payments and college bills, that's hard to do right now.

But, to be honest, I haven't really looked that hard for positions outside my field here that still might pay really well. Nor have we really considered trying to cut back the kind of home we live in and the way we live, for the express purpose of staying in town. So, D. and I talked about it seriously last night for the first time. No resolution yet, but we agreed that I will at least look at the classifieds starting this week to see what's there.

Plus, I just applied to be the executive director of a charitable foundation here in town, who just lost their leader. I've been associated with them through both volunteering time and giving donations, and would love to do that kind of work. But what they pay - who knows? I have a friend who's on the board, though, and will call him today to see what I can find out.

In a previous post I referred to all kinds of plans I had that will now not come to pass. What I meant by that in part was that I had been thinking of making a career change eventually, to go and do something I consider more "meaningful", like teach, or work in the non-profit sector. To do this, I would need a Masters, and had planned on getting one during the evenings over the next 5 years, and then taking early retirement at 55 (locking in retiree health benefits) so as to have a floor of income available if needed. But by that time, college would be done, and hopefully a downsizing move would reduce expenses further, and allow us to live on a lot less.

None of this seems possible now, since to get to early retirement with Bell Ins. means I would have to work for them somewhere for 5 more years, and to date no such opportunity exists. If I go work for someone else, I will probably have to work until 65 to get any chance at decent retirement insurance benefits with them. Should I consider taking a year off starting in Fall, get that Masters in one year of full time schooling, and then making the career change early? I think financially it would be pretty hard, but it might be doable...

Outside the box thinking. Is it really outside the box thinking, or being foolhardy? Maybe it's off the dial thinking instead... or am I just gutless in my old age? Do I need to use a walker already because I'm afraid I'll fall down? Metaphorically speaking, that is... ;)