How to downgrade your job but not your life
Switching jobs may mean an initial pay cut, but there could be perks to doing it anyway.
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The purpose of these steps is to maximize the difference between your income and your actual required spending each month so that, if you choose to take a lower paying job, you’re well prepared for any lifestyle changes that might be needed. Plus, you can save that extra income as an emergency fund or a startup fund for any ventures you might want to take on.
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The Simple Dollar is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds – we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.
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Fill your spare time by doing what you love
Rather than spending your spare time idling, spend every spare moment you can doing what you love to do. Don’t be afraid to be an unpaid volunteer if need be. Don’t be afraid to burn countless evenings practicing your skills. In fact, that’s the type of thing you should be doing if you want to make that kind of leap.
The more you practice something, the better you get at it, particularly if you try to change up what you’re doing and don’t just repeat the same routine over and over again.
Cultivate luck by collecting opportunities
Hand in hand with doing what you love is building connections within that field that you’re so passionate about. Spend time contacting anyone and everyone in that field. Get to know them as best you can. Don’t be afraid to do small favors for them as well in order to cultivate a good reputation.
At the same time, don’t hesitate to share the fruits from the time you’re spending doing what you love. The internet just begs for this, in the form of blogs, YouTube videos, Flickr pictures, and countless other avenues.
Reboot your social circle
If you find that your normal social circle is not absolutely supportive of the time you’re spending on new directions in your life, don’t be afraid to reboot that circle. Stick with the friends in your life that are supportive of your changes and find new people to spend time with to replace the people who doubt you or taunt your changes.
Quite often, you’ll find these new friends in the process of cultivating opportunities. As you begin to meet people with similar passions as your own, it’s easy to build new relationships with them. The key is to surround yourself with people that provide some degree of positive reinforcement to your new life directions rather than negative reinforcement.
Be a free agent
A final key step is to start looking at your current job in a new light. Your job is not your life. It’s a method of earning income, one where you exchange some of your energy and effort for some of the employer’s money. Your employer is obviously looking for the best exchange there, so you should do the same. Don’t dump all of your emotions and energy into your job – do your tasks and move on to the real place to utilize your emotions and energy, which is your new area of focus.
Similarly, never fall into the trap of thinking of your boss or your employer as your friend. Yes, quite often they are nice to you because being nice to you is a highly effective way of getting you to go the extra mile. That’s not friendship, however, and if you find yourself going way above and beyond in order to help out a boss or an employer out of a sense of “friendship,” you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Remember, your goal is to get yourself into the right place so you can do what you love with your life. Keep that front and center and you’ll find that things will begin falling into place for you.
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