What is your present career? What career are you planning on? Doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer, pharmacist, programmer, teacher? It is important to recognize that sometimes it takes a while before you really figure out what you enjoy. And even more importantly, know that what you may enjoy for the next ten years of your life may not be the same as what you enjoy the ten years after that!

Career Change
As you mature and gain in experience and confidence, your goals may change as well. Your initial goal may be to be a computer engineer, designing new chips for the next generation of video game box, but after a few years of doing so, you may now be interested in designing the games themselves. Later your interests may take you towards managing the entire process of bringing a new generation of video games to market, and making it a success. You may be piqued by marketing, and you may gravitate towards becoming a marketing manager. Following your success in that role, you may wish to become the CEO of the firm, setting the direction and vision for the company itself!

Enjoying your Work!
Keeping an open mind, and remaining true to yourself at every stage of your career, is the single best method of achieving your full potential. So keep yourself open to possibilities, and learn to listen to yourself. If you want to get up and go to work every morning, it won't be work anymore. It will be doing something you love and doing it until you love it! Of course, you must keep yourself flexible and in a position to make that switch when the time is right.

That requires not only mental preparedness, but also ensuring that financially you are not putting yourself at a risk when doing so. This is because any change of this type is inherently risky- you may not like the new job, the new job may pay less than the old one and so forth- and you don't want other risk factors, like huge payments on debt, to interfere with your career and life aspirations.

Financial Preparedness
Thus, getting out of debt and staying debt-free, along with living well below your means, are important

enablers in maintaining your financial flexibility to switch careers and jobs.

There are of course many other reasons to be debt-free, but the above is a crucial reason to stay out of it, so that debt and debt repayment is not an obstacle in fulfilling your potential. Just as an athlete wins by staying lean and strong, you win by keeping yourself financially fit, and mentally strong.

We will take leave with the above thoughts and tip for this week and will be back next week, with more tips to help smooth your path to greater riches. As usual, we welcome feedback at feedback@characterandwealth.com.