How to Decide to Quit Your Day Job

Quitting your day job can be one of the most rewarding decisions of your career, but it can also be one of the scariest. With some planning and belt-tightening, it can go relatively smoothly.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Career Counseling
• Calendars
• Business Plan Software
• Personal Financial Software

1. Decide what you will do to earn a living if you quit your day job.
2. Do you have another job to go to, or will you be starting a business from scratch?
3. Determine how long you can go without work with the money you have available. Make a budget from your expenses from the past six months to see exactly where your money is spent, and see whether you can cut back on any expenditures until your cash flow returns.
4. Consider your emotional needs. Do you have a strong bond to the work you do and the people you work with, or are you the adventurous type who is excited by change and the unknown? Is your identity tied into your current job?
5. Ask yourself whether you have people who are counting on you and your current job to take care of them. Family responsibilities often keep people from making radical changes in their work life.
6. Investigate the benefits you will lose by quitting your day job, including medical and retirement. Research some alternatives, including COBRAs and mutual funds.
7. Quit your day job and discover the world that is waiting out there for you.

Tips & Warnings

• Unless you are independently wealthy, you will need to have some other means of sustaining yourself after you quit your job.
• Quitting a job can be very stressful; many people do not deal with uncertainty well. Determine what you can and cannot put up with.
• Contact a therapist or a career counselor for guidance during this period of uncertainty.
• The financial constraints that most of us live within require that we have a certain amount of security in our work. Make sure you can financially handle quitting before you quit.

Who Can Help:

• Earn an Associate's, Bachelor's or Master's Degree from the University of Phoenix
• University of Phoenix, degree Programs to Fit Your Life.