To think there's a point where it's too late to hugely change your life

[FloatingOutOnTheTide]

I'm forever hearing "it's never too late to change"; "life can be anything you want it to be"; "only you hold yourself back".

But just being realistic here - by the time you are in later middle age. Married with children and no good reason to leave your marriage. In a career. If you aren't already very wealthy, you're not likely to become so, unless you inherit or win the lottery. You can't make drastic career changes that late in life. You can't strategically marry if you're already married (and yes, before I get flamed, a lot of people do aquire wealth through marriage).

It is far harder to be a free spirit travelling the world if you've already got children and mortgage commitments. Your body and looks are only going in one direction, eventually, no matter how much you fight it with treatments and exercise. It will catch up with you at some point.

Just doing a lot of thinking at the moment and it seems it's just too late - I'd like to be super successful and wealthy and well travelled and to have made more of my looks whilst younger.. But the barrage of inspirational slogans saying it's never too late just don't ring true. Sometimes it is.

@corythatwas hmmm I am actually a very hard worker (known for it at work), but I think my issue could be more that I'm inflexible eg I will work incredibly hard for the hours im contracted, but I don't want to be doing lots of overtime. I don't want to never see my family in order to travel or build a career. And it's very hard to have your cake and eat it.

@FloatingOutOnTheTide, I do think you do have to accept that if you want a career change, then you are working for yourself and not for your employer, so that does involve overtime. Your employer has no interest in your dreams so they're not going to be paying you for them.

It will involve giving up other interests/free time and working for yourself. Doesn't have to involve giving up all family time, but might have to involve staying up late at night, or getting up early in the morning, sitting in the same room as the family but doing a bit of work on the sly (if there is routine work that can be done that way). Negotiating an arrangement with your partner that allows you set working times.

It's like training for a marathon: you can either decide you can find the time to do it, or you can decide you can't, but it is going to be very hard to run well without training.

Also- you are very young. If this is not the time, the time may still come. I was not in a position to do much for myself at your age: I have done much better since.

Doing it now. Age 45. Retraining as a nurse. It's not easy but it can be done. My main problem is that I don't get the support a young student would from family. It can be done!

Its always possible to change your life dramatically, just not for the better. I mean you could start a torrid affair with a 25 year old toy boy, which gets discovered by your husband so he initiates divorce proceedings. You then take up injecting heroin as a hobby and spend all the money from the divorce settlement on that. WIthin months you could be alone in a box somewhere - completely different life. :)

Changing your life for the better is much harder though but possible, depending on what you want. It might help to list all the important areas of your life and how happy you are with them right now (so family, friends, career, hobbies/interests, travel). For the low scoring ones work out what you would make them "better" in your eyes and what practical steps you could take. I think that is better than just dreams/reading motivational guff about seize your dreams and feeling bad because you havent.

There can also be areas of your life that are lower priorities, so it might be that you prioritise family over your career. Therefore even though you dont have the "dream" career you are perfectly happy with the work-life balance it gives you. ALternatively you might be happy with the carrer but never see your children/travel and since family/travel is much more important to you you might decide to reduce or change your career.

My uncle moved to South America in his late 40s and met someone. He's now in his early 60s with a 14 year old, an 10 year old and 2 stepsons at university. I'd say that's a pretty big/late change.

You also need to remember that sometimes changes need to happen whether you want them to or not...

I am in my late 40s now and there has been lots of upheavals and events which are forcing me to change many aspects of my life.

I think that with Covid, many people especially career-wise/financially will have to do things differently not to mention that some relationships won't survive this year of turmoil.

Thinking that nothing should change after a certain age is not how life pans out...

I believe that you can always grow, experience new things and after all you only have one life, it should not be all about domestic drudgery no matter how old you are.

I think some of this is also about managing internal contradictions. I'd love to have more money, but in every career decision I've made, I've actively chosen the lesser paid path (e.g. stay in public sector over private sector, don't go for management jobs as it would take me away from the type of work I like).

My values and the type of work I do matter more to me than money in practice. So I have to come to terms with the fact that the part that earns more money is unlikely to be satisfied.

When you're young you can defer everything to the future and pretend that these trade-offs will all get resolved eventually. Whereas later on you can see that's not really the case.

Late 30s is hardly "later middle age"!

I am no use at the money stuff. But some MNers seem really hot on it - is it worth a post looking at how you can increase your income using or building on current skills?

Perhaps as you get more experience and respect in your new job it will become more fulfilling. A change is always good, anyway, it might just take time to come through.

If relationship is uninspiring, is it really right for you? LTB is often given as a flippant joke/remark but in reality you don't need to wait for an affair or abuse to happen to leave a marriage, if it is something that's dragging you down. Obviously it's still a massive change/decision and likely irreversible, but it sounds like you know that. I'm not suggesting leaving in order to pursue a richer husband but for happiness/freedom, if that is what you are looking for.

Oh I really agree with you OP. I was disussing this with DH last night.

We have the choice of staying in jobs we hate but saving for a decent retirement (at state pension age, nothing fun) or finding jobs we enjoy but accepting a much harder retirement.

I’ve lost my career recently through having to care for unwell teens. After struggling to maintain it all these years, I’m really grieving. Yes they will leave home but by then, I won’t be able to pick it up again.

So it’s not “wealth” as such but it’s crap when you’ve worked really hard and don’t really have anything to show for it - and have to keep working really hard to just stay afloat.