Personal Finance News Friday 11/30

Phil's Personal Finance Tip of the Day:

Second Acts: Turning Your Passion Into a Paycheck

By Arlene Weintraub | U.S.News & World Report LP – Wed, Nov 28, 2012 11:43 AM EST

When Marva Goldsmith took a buyout in 2001 after a 20-year career at a Detroit utilities company, she moved to Washington, D.C., in search of a job that would use her experience lobbying on energy as well as her training as an electrical engineer. But she was dogged by a question a career coach had once posed: "If you could do anything, without any constraints, what would you do?"

Inspired, Goldsmith unearthed an old dream of owning a clothing boutique (never mind that she had no experience in fashion retailing) and appended to it her talent for persuading people. Result: a consulting company that helps people buff up their image and the book Re-Branding Yourself After Age 50. She acquired her first customers by going to conferences in the utilities industry and networking with former colleagues who had watched her in action.

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"Even if you're transitioning to something very different, your network knows your skill sets," says Goldsmith, 53. A former co-worker who was on the board of a local nonprofit handed her a $10,000 contract to put on four seminars for women transitioning from welfare to work--the start of what Goldsmith says is now a booming business coaching and running seminars for baby boomers changing careers.

Goldsmith certainly identified a hot market, and she exemplifies it. As housing values, job security, and nest eggs have shrunk, more and more American workers are finding themselves in her shoes.

Some are changing careers because they're itching to follow a passion; others because they've been downsized out or have had to reschedule retirement.

Nearly half of working Americans now worry that they haven't set aside the funds they'll need to retire comfortably, up from 29 percent in 2007, according to a survey by the Employee Benefits Research Institute. A 2011 report by the MetLife Foundation and Encore.org, an information provider for older job seekers, found that about 9 million Americans, or 9 percent of people between age 44 and 70, are in second careers--up 7 percent in the last three years. Another 31 million are interested in pursuing a career change.

To read the entire article from Arlene Weintraub | U.S.News & World Report LP:http://finance.yahoo.com/news/second-acts-turning-passion-paycheck-164307413.html

Inspirational Quotes@Inspire_Us from Twitter:

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else. -Winston Churchill