Wanting to change careers is one thing. Having enough financial breathing room to make that change is another.

Barney Whiter — aka The Escape Artist — joins Lucia Knight to explore the idea of financial runway: the amount of time and choice your finances give you if you want to step back, change direction, retrain or temporarily earn less.

But your runway isn't determined by your salary alone. How much you've accumulated matters, and so does how much your life costs to maintain. As Barney puts it, “lifestyle inflation is the enemy of career change.”

And sometimes, the more successful you've become, the harder that can be to see.

• Why financial runway can give you more freedom to make a career change
• A simple way to think about how much runway you currently have
• Why earning more doesn't necessarily mean having more career options
• How lifestyle inflation can quietly reduce your freedom
• Why your professional “tribe” may influence what you've come to see as a normal lifestyle

Career change doesn't have to begin with knowing exactly what comes next. Sometimes the first step is understanding what's keeping you stuck now.

Take Lucia's Joy at Work Quiz (https://lucia-trqb5gnw.scoreapp.com) to discover your Joy at Work potential score, where you may have the easiest opportunity to make a change, and the blind spot that could be getting in your way.

Resources:

Read Lucia's original article about Barney's career change - https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/jam-makers-1/2019/3/4/barney-whiter-the-escape-artist-accountant-to-financially-independent

Learn more about Barney and The Escape Artist - https://theescapeartist.me/about/