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

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.

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.

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.