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Why It’s Never Too Late to Start a New Career

Four stories of how people made big job changes after 50


spinner image ingrid fournier sits at a desk smiling in a library
Ingrid Fournier poses for a portrait inside the Scottville Library on July 23, 2023.
Nick Hagan

Ingrid Fournier, 56, started teaching as a Peace Corps fellow shortly after college. She traveled abroad, met and married another volunteer, and together they began their teaching careers while serving in Latin America. Upon returning to the U.S., Fournier taught kindergarten through eighth grade for 26 years in school districts across Michigan, mostly in the Forest Hills community near Grand Rapids.  

“It was wonderful,” she says of her career, “but it wasn’t sustainable. What was being asked of teachers was too much.”

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the profession left many educators feeling overworked, exhausted and undervalued. A little over a year ago, during spring break of 2022, Fournier, along with her husband, quit.

“I had five more years until I would have been completely vested in retirement, but it wasn’t good for me mentally,” she says. “We were lucky enough to be in a position that we could just say, 'We're done.'”

The couple decided to take a year off to figure out what was next. They cut back on leisure activities like traveling that they had enjoyed for years.

In January, Fournier found new passion as branch manager of a public library in Scottville, Michigan, a city just shy of 1,400 residents. She plans activities for schoolchildren and is involved in events like a highly anticipated beekeeping series that merges history, biology and culture. In some ways, she’s still a teacher but on a different level, with an easier pace and support from administration, colleagues and a close-knit community.

The Fourniers are not alone in their choice to change careers when retirement is not too far in their future. Some career switchers are escaping a frustrating work environment while others are searching for more flexibility, more money and fewer hours. 

“The desire to do work that matters is often the dominant motivator,” says Nancy Collamer, a retirement coach and author of Second-Act Careers: 50+ Ways to Profit From Your Passions During Semi-Retirement. “The other thing is that around retirement age, people are just ready for a change.” 

According to an AARP study, 62 percent of people age 50 and older say the pandemic made them reprioritize how a job fits into their life and 33 percent say that living through the pandemic made them want to improve their work-life balance.

How going back to school can help

In general, 1 in 4 Americans are looking to change career paths and are willing to return to the classroom to make the switch, according to a recent poll conducted on behalf of Globalization Partners.

spinner image attorney barbara vargo sits at a desk with an open book in an office
American attorney Barbara Vargo at a serviced apartment in Bangkok on July 21, 2023.
Luke Duggleby/Redux

For example, Barbara Vargo left a 25-year career working in hospice to study law. She chose a two-year program at Creighton University in Omaha, more than 500 miles from her home in Rapid City, South Dakota.

“If I was going to do this,” she says, “I wanted to get through it as quickly as possible.”

Vargo financed her education through a combination of savings, scholarships and low-interest loans. She rented an apartment, buckled down and excelled in her studies, and formed lasting friendships with an intimate group who dubbed themselves the Fine Wine Club. At least once a month, she got to see her family in Rapid City. She earned a juris doctor degree in 2018 at 52.

Looking back, Vargo says, “I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of [working in hospice]. As a volunteer coordinator, I had some wonderful opportunities to meet the best people in the community who really looked at how they could help people. To be able to be a conduit for that was such a gift.”

She also saw families torn apart when a loved one died without a will, which led to her interest in law. Changes in her own family life made a return to school possible.

“I was not enjoying my job the same way that I had done before,” Vargo says. “At the same time, my kids had all left for college and my husband was perfectly able to take care of himself, and so it felt like an opportunity to go do something different but still be involved in helping people as they are making those plans for the end of life.”

As an estate planning attorney for the past three years at Lynn, Jackson, Shultz & Lebrun in South Dakota, she is now able to meld her compassion for those suffering loss with the ability to help families in a way that was not possible in her previous career.

“Her story really illuminates a couple of key points” in choosing a new career, Collamer says. “Think about what problems … you can help solve. [Vargo] could see that people needed legal representation. She realized that that was a problem that spoke to her and that she wanted to get involved with helping to solve.”

To those considering law school, Vargo says don’t be intimidated, but keep in mind that life experience is no substitute for preparation and hard work.

“All first-year law students have fears and questions,” she says. “One of the gifts of being older is that I have the experience to know that even the most confident-appearing people question their abilities.”

When facing her own fears, she asked herself, “What’s the worst that could happen? If I couldn’t do it, I’d focus my efforts somewhere else.”

Consider how to finance a career switch

About 1,200 miles across the country, an Ohio native shares a similar story.

spinner image doctor carl allamby poses outside the glass doors of a hospital emergency room
Dr. Carl Allamby poses for a portrait outside the Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest Medical Building on Aug 2, 2023.
Nate Smallwood

Carl Allamby, a former car mechanic, was in his mid-30s when he went back to college to major in business management. He was running a successful auto repair business that he found “emotionally draining, with no ability to disengage, even while on vacation,” he says. As he saw it, “that was how it was going to be for the rest of my working life.”

A college biology class reignited a childhood dream. He changed his major to pre-med and invested five years and thousands of dollars to become a doctor.

With a wife and two teenagers to consider, he carefully planned every move. “I knew that it was going to take several years before I could even apply to medical school,” he says.

He and his wife agreed that while he would continue his studies, she would be the primary breadwinner and the auto repair business he started at 19 would have to go.

“I held a huge auction where we liquidated everything. Sold all the equipment and most all of the tools that I owned for over 25 years — sold it all in one day and walked away. ... It was liberating,” he says.

Allamby graduated from Northeast Ohio Medical University in 2019. After completing his residency, he became an emergency room physician at Cleveland Clinic’s Hillcrest Hospital at age 51.

An unexpected benefit of the career change: His stress level dropped.

“As a business owner, you are responsible for so many different things,” Allamby says. “There’s personnel management, there’s management of your own time, [and] it’s managing customers. There’s all the other tasks of just running an organization and making it successful year after year.”

As a doctor, “sometimes I see the worst of life — the worst things that you can imagine that could happen to people. But I’ve never had a nightmare about my days at the hospital or what I’ve seen. I still have nightmares about some of my days in my shop.”

“I’m at this stage in my life when it’s becoming more about what kind of legacy am I going to leave, what am I going to be remembered for, what kind of good am I doing in the world, I feel like that purpose is being really fulfilled.”

Fast, affordable paths to new career skills

Going back to school can be very expensive, particularly for those considering graduate degrees. Older adults should be mindful of how student loan debt or depleted savings could affect their retirement plans.

But less expensive educational opportunities are available for those who are considering a career change. If you’re looking to upskill quickly without breaking the bank, a certificate program may be right for you.

In fact, a recent study found that aspiring adult learners actually prefer nondegree pathways, mainly because certification programs focus on specific skills in an industry, making job seekers “job-ready” and attractive to hiring managers. Platforms such as AARP Skills Builder for Work also let you take online courses free or for reduced prices.

More than 1 million certificates are awarded in the U.S. each year, with the most popular fields being business, education and health professions, according to the National Center of Education Statistics.

For example, if you’re interested in a switch to a career in law, paralegal may be an affordable way to enter the field without a law degree. More than 1,000 institutions across the country offer formal paralegal programs leading to a degree or certificate, according to the American Bar Association. The association maintains a directory of ABA-approved paralegal education programs on its website.

Other fields also have affordable pathways to jobs. Spurred by a booming wellness industry, colleges and universities are offering certificates in sustainable nutrition, wellness coaching, medicinal plants and more. University agricultural extension programs offer training in sustainable food and farming.

spinner image tanya doka-spandhla wears a coloful dress while she stands in a greenhouse doorway with a gardening tool
Tanya Doka-Spandhla, founder of Passion to Seed Gardening photographed in Gaithersburg, MD on July 15, 2023.
Justin Tsucalas

Starting your own business is another way many people make a change in careers. Tanya Doka-Spandhla was a bona fide computer techie for an aerospace technology company when she started Passion to Seed Gardening eight years ago in a rural area of Montgomery County, Maryland, at age 50. 

On less than 2 acres, she grows fruits and vegetables, including muboora and horned melons that are staples in her native Zimbabwe. The profit margin may be slim, but her fan base of African immigrants is thriving and she recently accepted a dream job as a farm and food educator with AfriThrive, a community-based relief organization. In other ways, the bounty is priceless. For Doka-Spandhla, there is pride in “carrying over my parents’ legacy by implementing what they taught me when I was an elementary school kid.”

As part of a county program that matches new farmers with private landowners, Doka-Spandhla received mentoring, technical assistance and specialized business training in marketing, accounting and sustainable farm practices. She attended classes twice a week for two months while employed full-time in information technology.

Working with computer chips and working with the soil have few obvious similarities, Doka-Spandhla says, but “coming up with a project plan and conceptualizing what the project and the plan is, is more or less using the same basic skills.”

While hiring demand has slowed in recent months, this year in general has been a favorable time for those looking to change jobs.

“People who want to switch careers will have a good chance of finding a job opening,” says Charles Lehman, an economist in New Mexico and past board member of the National Career Development Association. “It’s definitely a labor shortage, and there’s a lot of job openings right now compared to job seekers.”

“There is more of a willingness to accept people into a career that they never worked before,” he says, “and a movement away from having specific educational credentials [and] more of a willingness to look at skills rather than degrees.”

“Don’t let fear stand in your way,” Lehman says.

Video: From Mechanic to Medical Doctor- Changing Careers at 47

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