I hesitated to write this blog post because it will hold me to a decision I recently made. I guess there’s no turning back now! After almost 25 years of working in the technology field, I’ve decided to change careers and become a financial planner. How did I get here? After my husband died in 2018, I had become increasingly dissatisfied in my career and ended up quitting my job, which I wrote about in this blog post.

At the time, I couldn’t figure out what I would rather do instead, so returned to work in technology as a contractor, which helped decrease my stress and give me more work/life flexibility. Working as a contract employee was a huge improvement over being a permanent employee, and I even dropped down to working four days per week, which gave me time to work on this website. But when my contract ended a year ago, I kept delaying looking for another role.

Around the same time, I read The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins, which convinced me that I no longer needed my financial advisor and could manage my money myself. That sent me down a path of obsessively reading books on personal finance, which quickly led to creating spreadsheets tracking my expenses, projecting income streams, and calculating how much money I needed to retire. I’ve always been a spreadsheet nerd, to the point that I am often teased about it by friends and family, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d become so obsessed with a topic.

Finally, one day it dawned on me that I never once voluntarily read a book on technology during my 25-year career in that field. So, if I’m constantly reading books on personal finance and offering to help family and friends with their finances, perhaps this was a clue I should pursue it as a career.

I started volunteering as a financial coach for Women’s Money Matters, an organization in Boston, to test out the idea, and I’m really enjoying working one-on-one with their clients. That encouraged me to research the available financial planning/coaching credentials and required education programs. In April I decided to go after the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) credential, which will allow me to create financial plans that are customized to clients based on their goals.

I’m now taking an accelerated online CFP course through the Boston Institute of Finance/Bryant University and also doing a virtual summer internship in financial planning, Amplified Planning’s Externship, where we get to learn from practitioners and simulate doing the work that financial planners do. If all goes well, I should be ready to take the six-hour (eek!) CFP certification exam in March 2026.

It’s definitely daunting to be back in school studying for a new career at the age of 51, and I periodically have self-doubt: Am I too old to change careers? What if I fail the certification exam? What if no one will hire me? What if I actually end up hating it?

But I’m more excited than scared. The main lessons I learned from my husband’s death is that life is short, and I want to take chances while I can. Based on my experiences, I would particularly love to help widowed women rebuild and take control of their financial lives. I’ve faced some of the challenges they are facing and can relate to what they are going through. I know I would find it so rewarding to be able to help them.