It's the end of the career break road. Time to go back. Copyright CareerBreakSecrets.com
You haven’t even left and now I’m asking you to think and plan for reentry? Yup. In some ways, this is the easiest part of the budget. Similar to any budget, the formula is simply:
Average daily spend X Days before earning a salary = Re-Entry Budget
See! Easy peasy!
I know, I know. That’s not the whole story, is it? There’s a lot that will go into figuring out how much your spend will be. To be conservative, you could use the same number you calculated from your current daily spend in estimating your travel budget. Essentially, whatever you spend today, plan for that.
That only leaves one tiny little detail. How much time will you be looking for a job before you are drawing a salary again? I can’t tell you how much time to budget for. But, I can give you some factors to think about as you set your budget. I would love to know how long reentry takes on average. As soon as I know, I will let you know. But, in the meantime, setting this part of the budget is more art than science.
Factors For Setting Your Re-Entry Career Break Budget
- Do you have a job waiting for you? Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who works for an understanding, progressive company
- What are the general economic conditions? Hard to tell, right? Especially ever since 2008-2009.
- Start up living costs needed. Do you have any extraordinary costs that you need to incur to get started again?
- Moving expenses. Are you returning to the same city/town or are you going to be starting fresh somewhere else? For most people, you are naturally going back to the same city. But, if the career break comes during a transition period of your life, you may be heading somewhere new to start fresh. Plan accordingly.
- Changing your career or same career? Generally speaking, I would tell you that if you are going to be staying in the same career or profession, your search time for a new job will be less. Why? All of your contacts, expertise, know-how is in that industry. If you are looking to change careers, you should plan for it to take a bit longer. How much? No idea. But, you are restarting without a support structure and industry colleagues to help guide your way. This might be shortened if you used part of your career break to build some skills or knowledge in this new area. Either way, it will impact your search time.
Anyone re-entered and have any thoughts or care to share your experience? Let me know in the comments below.
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Tags: Budgeting, career break advice, career break travel, travel advice
